


The Pull of You

by unicornpoe



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Author Has No Regard For Narrative Structure, Babysitting, Big Men and Small Babies, Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Captain America Big Bang 2019 | cabigbang, Domestic, Falling In Love, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Knitting, M/M, Parent Steve Rogers, War Veteran Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 02:44:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 27,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21154286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicornpoe/pseuds/unicornpoe
Summary: When Bucky Barnes moves into his Brooklyn apartment, he does three things: puts his chair on the fire escape, buys a cactus, and avoids talking to the neighbors.But he can't seem to avoid Steve Rogers from next door and his adorable three-year-old daughter, Sarah—and as Bucky gets to know them, and begins to let them know him, too, he starts to think that he might not want to.They've all been alone for so long. Maybe they don't have to be anymore.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> BOY OH BOY. This funky little guy has been dancing around in my head for a long time, and I'm unspeakably glad that I finally trapped him on paper like a weird sort of genie. Anyway. 
> 
> Thank you, first and foremost, to [deisderium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deisderium/pseuds/deisderium%20art): your art is beautiful and you are wonderful and I couldn't have asked for a better person to collab on my first BB<3
> 
> Next, thank you to [ReynardinePotter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReynardinePotter) for the fabulous and fast beta<3
> 
> Finally, thank you to the CABB mods: you're running a smooth and lovely event, here, and every moment was enjoyable<3
> 
> Title from The National song of the same name. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

The apartment is mostly empty when Bucky moves in, nothing but a few clumps of cobwebs and dust and an old dresser missing all of its drawers in the series of pale white rooms. He thumps his mattress down on the floor next to an outlet, plugs in his phone and his laptop, digs a pair of sweatpants out of a cardboard box, lays down, and doesn’t dream.

***

He moves in slowly, in increments. Tucking his one bowl, cup, plate, and set of silverware into the barren cabinets above the stove. Lining his four pairs of shoes up in the entranceway. Setting up his IKEA coffee table and futon and chairs and bookcase with minimal swearing, which is pretty fucking impressive for a man with a bionic arm. He buys a cactus in a small pink pot and places it in his bedroom window, and sets a reminder on his phone to water it twice a week. He makes a note to name it. Wouldn’t hurt. 

He finds an ancient, dark green lawn chair in the closet while he’s hanging up all his clothes. He pulls it out, dusts it off, and sets it outside on the fire escape, nearly-but-not-quite unfolded all the way so he has room to sit without falling. 

***

Because the thing is—he’s fine. He’s just fine. He’s _ great. _ So people can stop worrying about him, because he’s twenty-seven years old and he survived getting his arm blown off by an IED in the middle of a desert in Afghanistan, so he can damn well survive living on his own in the middle of Brooklyn in a very tall apartment complex. Ok? Ok. Fucking _ fine. _

***

It becomes a bit of a routine. Bucky wakes up whenever the hell he wants to wake up because he’s too fucked in the head to keep a steady job just yet; he makes coffee (coffee is important, coffee is his body’s lifeblood, his soul is at least ninety percent coffee at this point); he takes it outside to his decrepit lawn chair, not bothering to change out of whatever form of soft clothing he decided was close enough to being pajamas the night before; and he watches. 

He knows his neighbors pretty well by this point, at least by sight. There’s the old woman directly across the street who has about twelve cats (Bucky has counted) and white hair faintly tinged blue, who likes to watch reruns of _ Dr. Phil _ very, very loudly and with the windows open. There’s the even older man in the apartment to Bucky’s right, who blasts Norwegian rap at completely random times every day. There is the family of seven beneath him—loud and adorable and rambunctious. There’s the guy with the big dog across the street, the couple who eat pizza every night for dinner, the trio of young women who never get home any sooner than two am. 

The apartment to Bucky’s left is empty. He sort of wishes that weren’t the case, because after nearly three months of living here, he could use another, closer person to spy on and never talk to because talking to people is scary. 

He’s only human, after all. 

But it’s nice, out here on his fire escape. Nicer when he manages to wake up with the sunrise, and sit out here, and soak up the rays that sift through the fibers of his t-shirt, that warm the metal of his arm like the hood of a car. He reads a lot, now (reading is uneventful and calming, and he can escape his mind for a little while, take an excursion in someone else’s) and always gets a few chapters in each morning during this part of his routine. He knits a lot, too. He learned overseas, and since he’s been back, he has discovered that it’s one of the few things he truly enjoys. He thinks about making an Etsy shop, selling some stuff there. He has no use for all of it. 

It makes him smile sometimes, to think about how different he is now. The curve of his smile matches the odd twist of bitter melancholy in his gut, and he drowns it in a sip of coffee. Black. 

***

Here are the reasons that Bucky Barnes leaves his apartment:

  1. Therapy. This is a thing that he does every single week, two times a week, because he _knows what he’s doing. _He has one group session at the VA on Thursdays, and then his private session on Tuesdays. He always attends. He does not always participate. 
  2. Arm appointments. This is a thing that he does every single week, one time a week, because he happened to be picked as a glorified test subject for _Tony Fucking Stark _to try his new line of prosthetics on, and he knows that he’s one lucky bastard, so it would be ungrateful and immature to skip out on these imperative checkups. He always attends. He doesn’t have to participate, just sit still while Stark fiddles around in there with a screwdriver and one of his weird, sentient little robots. 
  3. Food. Groceries. Blah blah blah. 
  4. Coffee. _Starbucks. _Imperative to living a successful/emotionally fulfilled life. Perhaps more important than the arm appointments. Definitely more important than the food. 
  5. Yarn. Lots. 
  6. So he can tell his sisters that he did when they inevitably call him and ask. He’s not a liar, and he’s not gonna take that up now. 

Here are the reasons that Bucky Barnes does not leave his apartment: 

  1. People (pedestrians, workers, dog walkers and businessmen and and and librarians) 
  2. Are
  3. So
  4. Fucking
  5. Loud (noises; sights; smells; feelings; the sound of an engine revving a few blocks over, the snarl of somebody’s chained dog, the slam of a car door, and Bucky’s skin erupts in tiny bumps and clammy sweat, and Bucky’s mind drags him back to a desert and a group of men who won’t ever leave where they are again)

***

The knock comes at ten am, loud, unexpected, and unwelcome. 

Groggy, Bucky jumps, but it’s half hearted. He pauses the episode of _ Parks and Rec _ he was watching on his laptop and climbs off of his mattress, doing his best to smooth the wrinkles out of the outfit—black jeans, a soft, worn henley that hides most of his arm with its red fabric—that he’d fallen asleep in last night. There’s no carpeting in his apartment, so his socked feet make a muffled sliding noise as he crosses to the door. 

Bucky opens it, and sees a god standing on the threshold. 

Seriously. He actually has to blink a few times, and then rub some of the sleep away from his eyes, just to make sure that his vision isn’t playing any tricks on him. The man standing across from him is gorgeous: soft-looking blond hair; deep blue eyes framed in long, pretty lashes; shoulders and arms that could probably pick Bucky up like he weighs nothing; a slightly crooked nose, looking like it’s been broken once in the distant past, which is the only thing that clues Bucky in to the fact that this might be a human here before him and not a deity to be worshipped. He smiles when he catches Bucky’s gaze—absolutely fucking radiant and absurdly cheerful—and then waves like a total dork.

“Hi!” says the man. “We’re your new neighbors.”

Confused, Bucky looks around until he notices the much smaller human standing tucked behind the man’s legs, one hand gripping the back of his pant leg, one hand clinging to three of the man’s long fingers. She looks to be about two or three, Bucky guesses as he examines her with a critical eye: on the smaller side, maybe a bit too thin, with round, pink cheeks, dark hair, and eyes that matches her father’s (father’s? Probably). She blinks up at Bucky, more stoic than shy.

“Uh,” says Bucky. 

“Oh, sorry,” says the man, sounding genuinely contrite. He sticks out a broad palm for Bucky to shake, so Bucky does so, hoping his own hands aren’t clammy and weird feeling. “My name is Steve Rogers. This little creature is Sarah.”

Bucky clears his throat. He hasn’t talked to another living human in at least three days (ah, the wonders of technology; he can get anything he wants delivered with just a swipe of his finger) and it shows in the way words stick in his gullet, in the way this man’s enthusiastic pleasantness is making Bucky want to run and hide in his bedroom. 

“Bucky Barnes,” he says, sounding a little more gruff than he would have liked. He’s having trouble meeting the brightness of Steve’s eyes, so he looks to Sarah instead, and offers up his least threatening smile. He hopes it works. It always worked on his sisters when they were little, and it works with Becca’s kids now. “Hello, Sarah. It’s nice to meet you.”

She blinks up at him again, eyes wide, but when Steve steps out from directly in front of her, she doesn’t make a move to hide behind him again. Bucky counts this as a win.

“You have very pretty hair,” Bucky adds in a lighter tone of voice. 

Sarah smiles at him, small and shy and sweet. Bucky can feel himself smiling back. 

Ugh. His cheeks hurt. He hasn’t done that in a while.

“Thank you,” says Steve, sounding a bit strangled. When Bucky glances back up at him, his cheeks are lightly pink, and his eyes are almost as wide as Sarah’s. “I mean. Sarah, say thank you to Bucky, sweetie.”

Sarah just ducks her chin as her smile turns into a grin, looking up at Bucky through lashes almost as long as her father’s, and Bucky wants to give himself a high five. _ He _ did that. _ He _ made her happy, a human, all on his own. He’s doing _ so goddamn well. _

“Oh, cheeky,” says Steve, a laugh in his voice. He’s smiling down at the girl like she’s the most wonderful thing this earth has to offer. Bucky finds him almost offensively likeable. “She takes after her mother,” Steve says (and _ oh _, Bucky thinks, disappointment setting in before he could even fully realize he was interested) “in spirit as well as looks.”

There’s a beat of silence, wherein Bucky has no idea how to continue/end this conversation, but Steve is looking at him like there’s something he should be saying, and so he steels himself and barrels on awkwardly. “Mom must be proud.”

Steve’s hand finds the top of Sarah’s head. He touches it lightly. “She was,” he says. 

Oh. And there it is. Bucky would recognize that tone of loss in another person’s voice anywhere; he heard it in his mother’s voice as he grew up, he heard it often when he was in the army, and he hears it every day that he speaks out loud in his own. That note of emptiness, where whatever used to fill it is gone. 

He wants Steve and Sarah to go home now. 

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says, the gruffness back in his voice without him choosing to put it there. Fuck. Without making a conscious decision to, he feels himself shuffling back a few steps, retreating into the safety of his silent apartment. “Nice to meet you.”

Steve’s eyes meet his, and Bucky stops moving, although he’s still leaning away. It’s just that the strength of blue in that gaze sort of stops Bucky in his tracks. 

“Don’t be,” Steve says, smiling like he knows what’s running through Bucky’s head at the moment, even though that is certainly impossible. “That was the natural assumption. I’m used to it.” And then, to Bucky’s surprised delight, that blush from earlier resurfaces in fuller force, staining the surface of Steve’s cheeks and running down his neck in blotchy streaks. 

“I, uh, I.” Steve looks down at Sarah in a move that can only be described as avoidance, and so Bucky, with nothing better to do, looks at her too. He winks, just because, which broadens her grin considerably. “I botched this,” Steve says, laughing self-consciously and cupping the back of his neck with one hand. “I meant to come over and introduce Sarah and I to you and let you know that your new neighbors _ weren’t _ crazy.”

Bucky laughs, which feels even stranger than smiling. It’s a harsh, sharp bark of a sound; Sarah and Steve look up at him with matching wide eyes, and Bucky wants to creep back into his bed and never come out again. “Pal,” Bucky says, leaning one shoulder against the doorframe, “if you think _ your _behavior is crazy, you should see the rest of the folks who live in this hellhole.”

Steve’s smile is full-fledged now. It’s sexy as hell. Bucky hopes he leaves soon. 

“That’s oddly comforting,” Steve says. Sarah tugs on the bottom of his obscenely tight t-shirt (seriously, someone needs to tell the guy that it’s not kind to any person attracted to male-bodied humans for him to go around in clothes that make him look like that) and Steve bends, sweeping her up in his arms in an arc high enough to prompt a wild giggle out of her. 

“Just tellin’ the truth,” Bucky says. 

“Well, thanks.”

“No problem.”

Steve stands there for a second more, Sarah on his hip, big, stupid, goofy, dumb, devastating smile on his face. Then he bobs his head over towards the apartment beside Bucky’s, taking a few steps backwards. 

“Well, we’re right over there, Bucky,” he says. “It was nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you,” Bucky says, voice strained. He doesn’t quite meet Steve’s eyes—too powerfully blue—but he does spare an extra smile for Sarah, and it pleases him when she smiles back. 

***

So this is the beginning of the story: 

Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes led three men into an area that they all knew would be dangerous. Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes was the furthest away from an IED when it detonated. Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes covered one of those men with his body as the bomb went off, saving his life. 

Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes and three men went in. Three fourths of Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes and one man came out. 

***

So this is the end of the story: 

Bucky Barnes is a decorated war veteran. Bucky Barnes lives in an apartment in Brooklyn, New York—just him, and his plant, and nothing else. Bucky Barnes has a metal arm—Stark Tech, top of the line, tested on him because his name was drawn out of a hat or something—and a flesh arm. Bucky Barnes does not talk to anyone from the army anymore. Bucky Barnes does not talk to anyone. 

***

Weeks pass, and Bucky doesn’t encounter Sarah and Steve again. Mostly, this is because whenever he hears them in the hallway (loud, happy, relentlessly so) he makes sure he’s curled up in his bed, or on his couch, or on his fire escape, head buried in a book or a new knitting project, absolutely unavailable. 

Sarah and Steve always leave the house together in the mornings (although Bucky frequently misses this, because, sleep) and then Sarah comes home accompanied by either a gorgeous woman or a gorgeous man at three pm, or comes home with Steve at six pm. It’s easy to avoid these times when Bucky barely ever leaves his apartment, anyway. 

It’s not that Bucky didn’t like them. He did. They were cute, in more ways than one—which, incidentally, is why he has to stay away from them. Bucky is, like… large, but not in a hot-Steve kind of way, more in a my-arm-is-heavy-so-I-have-too-many-pounds-on-my-body kind of way, and, also, you know. They heavy arm is _ metal. _Which is scary. And he’s pretty sure his face is kind of scary too, usually, because sometimes the barista who serves him in the afternoons looks like she’s going to cry. 

Anyway. Bucky isn’t good for cute things. Not anymore. 

He does watch them, though. Occasionally. 

And, ok, yes; he realizes that this is creepy. Borderline stalker-esque. But he doesn’t take pictures, or videos, or creepy little notes. He just takes _ noti _ce. 

He can see into their kitchen from his chair on the fireplace, is the thing. He doesn’t even have to lean around the metal railing or anything, he just has to look forward. And they keep their curtains wide open. _ And _he’s pretty sure Steve has caught him at it, and then just waved. Plus it’s not like he feels good about himself, ever. So. 

Bucky learns a few things about the Rogers family from doing this. They are that: 

  1. Steve Rogers is a really, really good dad. He plays with Sarah when she wants him to, smiles at her over admirably healthy meals, engages in lively, unintelligible three-year-old conversation with her. Sarah is always clean, always dressed well, always, always, always taken care of. It makes a place inside of Bucky ache with fierce happiness. 
  2. Sarah Rogers is a really, really wonderful kid. She’s happy, and cute, and curious. She reminds Bucky of when Becca was little, and so engaged in everything that was happening in the world around her. She is lovely. She deserves to be loved as much as Steve clearly loves her. 

There isn’t much else that he’s able to gather through a sliver of window for about five seconds a day, but this is enough for him to decide that he can never, ever talk to them again. They’re too perfect, and Bucky is well-versed on what happens when he finds perfect people: they don’t like him. So. He makes a list on his head of things that he Absolutely Cannot Do, and it looks like this: 

  1. TALK TO STEVE AND SARAH ROGERS

***

Because Bucky’s place of residence is an apartment complex in Brooklyn, of-fucking-course somebody pulls the fire alarm in the middle of the night. 

He rolls right off of his mattress and onto the floor, groaning loudly in the back of his throat. He’d _ just _gotten to sleep; just now, after hours of staring at the ceiling, imagining pain in an arm that isn’t even there—isn’t even flesh and bone—listening to the soundtrack of screams playing behind his eyes. 

Bucky briefly contemplates just laying here and hoping that it’s a false alarm, but then he thinks about Becca’s disappointed face if he did that, and his therapist’s disappointed face if he did that, and his tombstone reading: _ here lies James Buchanan Barnes, who survived the army but didn’t survive a fire he could have escaped from because he is a dumbass _. And he heaves himself to his feet. 

At least he fell asleep in his clothes again last night—this morning?—so he doesn’t have to look around for anything other than shoes. That’s a plus. 

Alarm blaring all around him, Bucky shoves his bare feet into his combat boots by the door, grabs his phone, keys, and wallet, and stumbles out into the hallway. He leaves his door unlocked—they lived in a place like this for a bit when they were kids, he knows the drill—and, patting uselessly at his wild hair, makes his groggy way down several flights of concrete steps and into the humid summer night. 

It’s almost assuredly a false alarm. Nobody is moving very quickly: the residents shuffle along in pairs and groups, pajama-clad and groggy, talking quietly amongst themselves as they sit on curbs and neighboring complex’s steps. 

Bucky wanders, half-blind with the sleepy crud clinging to his eyelashes, to the nearest bit of free curb he can see. He nearly trips on his unlaced boots at the sharp, terrified cry that rings in his ears.

It’s an instinct, really: one born of being virtually a second parent to his three younger sisters all throughout his childhood, and nurtured by his years babysitting Becca’s kids, and his years in the army. He hears a cry of distress, and he goes to it, already working out the best way to provide comfort or help or, if he isn’t sufficient, find someone who is. It’s as deeply a part of his nature as anything else. 

So when Bucky turns and sees Sarah Rogers, her small, perfect face bright red and terrified, her tiny, adorable hands clinging to the fabric of her very forlorn-looking father’s t-shirt, Bucky doesn’t think.

“It’s ok, Sarah,” he says, pressing his hand (flesh hand) to the back of her heaving ribcage, patting her gently, modulating his voice so that it’s low and soothing and calm, instead of rasping and harsh and… terrifying. He leans in and, aware that he is not a small man, stoops in as close as he dares. He smiles as she meets his eyes. “Hey. Remember me? I’m Bucky. Your neighbor. I know you’re probably really scared right now, because you were having a nice, calm sleep and that ugly noise woke you up, but you’re safe. Your dad has you, and he won’t let anything happen to you, and the nice firemen are here, and they’ll take care of everything. You’re ok, Sarah. It’s all gonna be just fine.”

She sobs again, big and wet and heartbreaking, but it seems more like leftover emotion than actual terror this time. She was shaking under Bucky’s palm, her fragile little body quivering with fear, but she is growing still; as he continues to rub little circles over the soft fabric of her pajama top, she blinks up at him, and leans her head down on her father’s shoulder. 

Her father.

Oh, fuck-me-with-a-spoon.

Bucky pulls away quick as anything and nearly falls on his ass, which does nothing to take away from the weirdness of the past fifteen seconds. Steve is staring at Bucky, and his eyes are huge, and the flickering yellow light from a dying streetlight above them is reflected in his pupils, uneven and bright. His lips are barely parted. 

“Oh god,” Bucky says. He realizes that he has a short-sleeved t-shirt on, and so not only did he just, just, just intrude upon his neighbors in a highly invasive way, but the part of his body that looks like a fully-calibrated weapon is on full display tonight. “That was. Unbearably weird of me.”

“Um,” says Steve, still staring, one hand settled protectively over Sarah’s back in the place that Bucky’s palm has just vacated, and “er,” says Steve, and “uh,” and Bucky has turned and is halfway down the sidewalk before he feels Steve’s hand on his (flesh) arm, light but insistent.

“Wait,” Steve says. It’s a full word, the first one he’s spoken tonight. Because he doesn’t sound like he’s going to inflict bodily harm upon anyone, Bucky turns around. 

“Sorry,” Bucky says again. He’s only ever spoken about fifty words directly to this man, and half of them have probably been some derivative of an apology. He’s sincerely glad that his complexion doesn’t really blush, because inside, he is flaming. 

“Bucky,” Steve says. And—he remembers Bucky’s name. Bucky doesn’t want to ask himself how that makes him feel. “Please don’t apologize. That was… you made her feel better in a sixteenth of the amount of time that I’ve spent trying to calm her down tonight,” he continues, smile as weary as his voice. “Why are you sorry about that?”

And it’s true, Bucky sees, now that his heart rate has settled back down to a more regular rhythm. Sarah’s head is pillowed upon one of Steve’s ridiculous shoulders, her little arms wrapped tightly about his neck, and she’s no longer sobbing—nothing but the occasional residual sniffle escapes her. Steve turns her a little, and Bucky sees that her eyes (still swimming in unshed tears) are growing heavy-lidded, more and more time passing between her last blink and her next one. She looks… ok. 

“Well, you know,” says Bucky. He shrugs, and the movement tugs at his arm, and he and Steve realize at the same time that Steve’s still holding onto him. He lets go, and Bucky’s arm hangs limp. “I did just talk to your kid without your permission in a really familiar way. That’s, like, not awesome.”

To Bucky’s bewilderment, this makes Steve grin. “You got kids, Bucky?” 

Bucky raises an eyebrow at him, crossing both of his arms over his chest and staring Steve down. “I look like I got kids, Rogers?”

“Oh, I dunno,” Steve says, and even though he’s speaking in a hush so as not to disrupt the swift descent of Sarah’s sleep, amusement is evident in the cadence of his tone. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you had a couple.”

“Huh,” snorts Bucky, an unattractive sound. “Well, no.”

“Nieces? Nephews? Godchildren?”

Bucky decides to help him out. “Three little sisters, all at least three years younger than me,” he says. “I helped raise them. One of them has kids of her own now, too, and I help out there when I can.”

He’s not sure why he is divulging this information. Not that it’s terribly personal, but Bucky Barnes isn’t used to giving _ any _ personal information about himself to _ anyone, _let alone to a guy who just moved in next to him. Not without wanting to leave the country, anyway. 

Maybe it’s the lateness of the hour. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s really difficult for Bucky Barnes and his gayness not to trust a big man holding a little kid like that. Either way, Bucky gives Steve this fact, and then he’s just _ fine. _

_ Look at me, Ms. Potts, _ he thinks at his therapist. _ Makin’ small talk without wanting to move to Siberia. _

“Hm,” Steve says, still smiling, broad hands curling around his daughter who has completely drifted to sleep at this point. “I can tell. You’re really good with kids.”

“You have one instance to base that inference off of,” Bucky says dryly, even though Steve’s comment is making him feel terrifyingly warm inside. He can’t remember the last time he was praised for something that didn’t have to do with a war, with a medal, with a mission that wasn’t successful. He can’t remember the last time he was praised for something that he thought deserved praise. 

“That’s all I need,” Steve says, smile small. “I told you. I couldn’t even make her a little less terrified.”

Bucky looks at him. The light from the emergency vehicles paints his skin in shades of red and blue, catches on the glints of gold in his hair; there are shadows beneath his eyes that speak of more than getting awoken in the middle of the night. Bucky has matching shadows beneath his own. 

There’s an edge to Steve’s smile that looks like more sorrow than he knows how to hold. 

Bucky wonders how long ago his wife died. 

“Thank you,” Bucky says, and means it more than he wants to. He shoves his hands into the pockets of his sweats, shoulders hunching a bit at the oddly chill gust of night air, and bites the inside of his lip to keep from smiling when the wind blows Steve and Sarah’s hair in the same direction. 

“Thank _ you _,” Steve says. Sarah stirs in his arms, and he presses one cheek to the top of head. His eyelashes are really, preposterously long. 

They stand facing each other, and the silence between them is thick. Bucky thinks: _ I am doing the one thing I’ve been telling myself that I cannot do, _and is disappointed but not surprised. 

Steve glances to the curb, gaze cutting down and then back up to Bucky in a blue-tinted flash. Bucky jerks his head in a nod, and silently they both take a seat on the cement (still warm from the summer day’s heat), knees arched, spines curved. Steve wraps his arms around his daughter; Bucky wraps his arms around his legs. 

They watch firefighters and police swarm their building, on the hunt for something that everyone knows is a false alarm. 

***

Bucky wakes up early this morning, just as the sun is stretching golden rays over the horizon. 

There is a faint, light pink cast to everything in the world as Bucky climbs out of his window and onto the fire escape, knitting bag in one hand, blanket in the other. The clouds that have gathered near the rising sun are orange and fuschia, and the colors extend through the rest of the sky, bleeding into the darkness of the receding night and staining every building below with a rose-colored tint that makes Bucky feel like he isn’t real. He might feel like he was dreaming, if he ever dreamed anything other than nightmares. 

He tucks his feet up into his lawn chair, curling into a ball and wrapping himself up in the blanket. His chair is, as usual, tipped in such an angle that he can see a sliver of the Rogers’s kitchen table, but the light is off still, and after that initial glance, he refuses to let himself look again. 

_ This is not good behavior. Stop _. 

Out of his knitting bag—a large, patchwork thing made of bits of his old shirts that he’d cut up and sewn into a vaguely sack-like shape with the sewing machine that used to belong to his Ma—he pulls a bundle of pale blue yarn and two long needles. 

He uses wooden needles still, even though that isn’t the norm, because the metal ones scrape too loudly against his left hand and the plastic ones just don’t feel good to hold; he uses patterns infrequently, preferring to create whatever item pops into his head than something that came out of someone else’s. He probably isn’t doing any of it right, he probably makes every person who has ever knit turn over in their graves every time he casts a stitch, but—but that’s ok. It calms him. It feels good. It feels good. It feels good. 

He starts without any particular idea in his mind, today. He casts on one stitch, two, three… 

He loses himself in the steady click of needles against needles, the smooth feel of the thick yarn running through his fingers as he begins to actually knit. Time passes, and the sun is almost fully risen when there’s movement out of the corner of his eye. 

_ Don’t look, _ Bucky thinks, and then he turns his fucking head and fucking _ fuck. _

This is what Bucky Barnes sees: 

  1. Steve Rogers, soft and sleepy in plaid pajama bottoms and a t-shirt, hair sticking up in the back, looking young and beautiful and tired.
  2. Sarah Rogers, curls wild, smile huge, sitting on her knees on one of the kitchen chairs.

It’s Saturday, Bucky realizes belatedly, which means that Steve doesn’t work, which means that Sarah won’t be leaving the house, which means they could sit there at that kitchen table for hours, torturing Bucky slowly. Which means that Bucky could have slept in for another few forevers, instead of coming out here and doing stupid things and knitting… he takes a look at what his hands had been creating without his brain’s consent. 

Fuck. 

It’s a blanket. Shaping up to be square, a subtle chevron pattern zigging and zagging through the center, hemmed in with lacy edges that he’s distractedly proud of himself for coming up with. But it’s small. Pretty. It’s a _ child’s _ blanket. 

_ Fuck. _

Bucky stands with a clatter, knocking his lawn chair into the iron rails of the fire escape as he gathers his knitting and his blanket up close to his chest. He swears softly as he climbs awkwardly over the upturned chair, swears slightly louder when he smacks his head on the windowsill on his way back inside.

Panting a little, Bucky drops his stuff in a pile on the floor and slams the window shut, leaning forward and resting his head and palms upon the sun-warmed glass for a moment. 

Well, that’s it. He has to move, then. There’s no other possible solution. 

***

Today is a therapy day, which means that Bucky is jumpy and jittery, anyway. He downs seven cups of coffee before three pm and forgoes any kind of meal, but he does take a shower and put on his least wrinkled clothes. Ms. Potts always gives him a slightly disappointed look when he shows up looking like a homeless person, and he hates that; so he makes an effort, on therapy days. 

Bucky’s (flesh) hand shakes as he locks his apartment door behind him, but he can’t decide if that’s the caffeine or the nerves. Or both. 

He doesn’t take the subway, because he’s not an idiot, and he knows his limits. There’s an equation in his head, and the results are obvious: 

THE MAN FORMERLY KNOWN AS SERGEANT JAMES BUCHANAN BARNES, DECORATED WAR VET AND TRAUMA VICTIM + SMALL, ENCLOSED, METAL TUBE FULL OF LOUD, SWEATY, CLOSE PEOPLE + POTENTIALLY TRAUMATIC DESTINATION = ABSOLUTELY DISASTROUS BREAKDOWNS 

So he walks. It isn’t very far to Ms. Potts’s office, and he doesn’t really get any kind of exercise other than these walks—plus, it’s fifteen extra minutes for him to settle his nerves. For him to sort through all of the odds and ends swimming around like darting minnows in his head. 

It goes much like it always goes with Ms. Potts. They greet each other, she insists that he call her Pepper, he declines out of a fiercely bred politeness that he retains from his childhood, they sit, she asks him about Things, he answers about those Things in the way least likely to make him cry, blah blah blah it hurts his brain to think about and— 

And then when he leaves, Pepper smiles at him softly, which is one of exactly four (4) (count ‘em, four) genuinely caring smiles that are bestowed upon Bucky Barnes per week, and sometimes he smiles back, and sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes, he can’t muster up even the smallest modicum of happiness to spread across his face, and he feels like the scum of the earth on those days. 

Today is a day that he can manage a little twitch of his lips, a skittish nod. The shake from his hand has spread to the rest of him, has settled down deep in the middle of his core, and he feels billowy and unmoored as he concentrates very carefully upon putting one foot in front of the other. He avoids every crack in the sidewalk, just to give himself something to focus on that isn’t awful. 

He’s tired. God, he’s so tired of— 

It takes hours, Bucky thinks, hours to make it up the stairs and to his front door. He was going to stop somewhere on the way home and grab something to eat, because he knows he doesn’t have anything but three-day-old Thai takeout in his refrigerator, but. But there’s a weary ache, and it radiates from the center of his bones. There’s a dusty fog, and it spills down through the cracks in his mind. 

His flesh arm feels heavy as he struggles with his lock. His metal arm feels like it isn’t there at all. 

“Hey, Bucky!”

Bucky jumps, dropping his key and turning around so fast that he trips and catches himself with one hand against his door. “What the fuck—_ what the fuck _.”

“Oh shit, oh my god,” Steve says, half leaning out of his doorway with one hand extended uselessly towards Bucky. He looks comically panicked, and if Bucky felt any less like he’s going to die, he might laugh. “Oh fuck.”

“Fuck,” Bucky agrees. He presses his free hand to the place where his heart pounds under his breastbone, struggling a bit to catch a full breath. _ “Fuck _, Steve.”

“Ok, ok, we need to stop saying that in front of my kid,” Steve says in a rush, and even though Sarah isn’t visible from Bucky’s viewpoint, he feels instantly contrite. “I didn’t mean to scare you like that, I—”

“It’s fine,” Bucky cuts in, stopping him before he can apologize. He doesn’t want their third meeting to be as full of apologies as their first two. “I’m just jumpy today.”

Steve looks absurdly relieved. He nods, and then ducks his head, looking sheepish. “Um, I was just wondering if you liked spaghetti? Because I accidentally made an ungodly amount, way more than Sarah and I can ever eat, and I don’t just wanna throw it away.”

Bucky knows he’s staring—and that his stare is sort of terrifying—but he can’t help it. His head still feels thick and slow and foggy, and his whole body is still shaking with a very faint tremble, and he’s starving, really, and, oh god, why the hell not. 

“Um, I know it’s kinda early for dinner, but, well, when you’re three it doesn’t really matter…” 

“I like spaghetti,” Bucky says gruffly. 

Steve’s whole fucking face lights up in a smile. What a dork. Bucky hates him. “Really? Great!” he says, beaming, opening his door wider. “Wanna come over, then?”

Bucky tries to respond but he’s having trouble making words work. Instead he just grunts out an affirmative, bending to pick up his keys before following Steve into his apartment. 

***

Sarah is sitting in the middle of the floor, holding a small stuffed dog hostage in the crook of her arm as she points down at a picture book that’s open before her. She’s talking, and it’s mostly nonsense, but her eyes track the progress of the very few sentences across the page. It’s absolutely adorable. 

She looks up as Steve and Bucky enters the room, expression curious but not alarmed, and Steve blows her a kiss. She giggles. 

Bucky goes to her immediately. He sits cross legged a few feet away from her so that she isn’t startled, hunching his spine and making himself as small as possible, which isn’t an easy feat; he props his elbows on his knees and rests his chin in his hands, giving Sarah a small smile as her eyes track his progress. He hears Steve’s soft laugh as the other man enters the kitchen, still visible over the counter that separates the two rooms, but he ignores him in favor of Steve’s daughter, who is not afraid of him. Not even with the arm. 

“Hi there, baby girl,” Bucky whispers in a voice soft enough that Steve probably (hopefully) can’t hear, holding his hand out in the space between them. “You seem happier today.”

After a brief moment of hesitation, Sarah lets go of the picture book and wraps her tiny fingers around Bucky’s palm. Her smile is shy as she peers up at him from beneath a riot of dark brown curls, and the expression on her face looks remarkably like Steve’s in that moment; self-conscious, and eager, and open. 

“What are you reading?” Bucky asks her, still in that same soft tone of voice. His gaze gets caught on the way each tiny knuckle of Sarah’s fingers is faintly white with the pressure of her grip on his hand, on the way she meets him with no wariness. 

“A doggy book,” Sarah says, her voice even softer than Bucky’s. It’s surprisingly low for a little girl her size: low and a little bit raspy, like she’s getting over a cold. Bucky thinks of the way she seems oddly fragile, and a sharp spike of worry shoots through him. He hopes that someone as perfect as her isn’t sick. 

“A doggy book for your friend here?” Bucky asks, pointing with his free hand at the toy Sarah is still cradling in one miniscule arm. She laughs and nods as he pets the dog’s head, and the sound clears some of that bone-deep exhaustion from his skeleton, leaves him feeling lighter. “What’s their name?” Bucky asks.

“Lucky.”

“Lucky,” Bucky repeats, nodding. “Hello, Lucky.”

Sarah picks Lucky up, pressing the toy’s face against Bucky’s cheek in a slightly off-target approximation of a kiss. Both of Bucky’s hands come up to hold hers in place—and he is gentle, gentle, gentle. The silver brightness of his metal hand gleams; he snatches it back, and leaves his flesh hand on hers. 

“Lucky likes you,” she informs him seriously. 

“Oh,” he says. There’s something thick in his throat, something pressing very tightly at the backs of his eyelids. “I like Lucky, too.”

Smiling at him, Sarah pulls her toy away and cradles it in her lap. She brings her attention back to the book on the floor, flipping to the first page and pressing one small finger to the beginning of the first sentence there. She cuts her gaze up to Bucky, making sure that he’s paying attention; he gives her a little nod, and then she resumes her recitation of the story in a louder tone of voice, checking to see if she still has his focus before she flips each page. 

Of course she does. 

Steve wanders in after a few minutes of this, coming quietly around the couch and sitting down on the cushions, his hands in his lap and a smile on his face. He catches Bucky’s eye and there must be something there, some tell that he hasn’t mastered the art of hiding yet: because concern flickers briefly through Steve’s pretty eyes and he stands, crouching down beside his daughter. 

He rests one large hand between her shoulder blades. She blinks up at him, words dying off, and Bucky rubs at the sore spot on his chest. 

“Ready to eat, my lady?” Steve asks her with a grin. 

“Yes, sir,” she answers primly, using his knee for leverage as she stands. Steve rises, swinging her up in his arms and then grinning down at Bucky. 

Bucky stands on unsteady legs. 

Together, the three of them enter the kitchen, and Bucky has to contain a half-hysterical snort of laughter as he finally sees this room from an angle that isn’t precarious and obstructed by metal railing, a few walls, and some panes of glass. It’s a small room, as kitchens go; about similar size and layout to Bucky’s, although the appliances are obviously much nicer, and there’s a general aura of pleasant homeishness to it any of Bucky’s rooms lack completely. The small, round table in the center of the room is spread with a white tablecloth, and there’s a large bowl of spaghetti and one of salad in the middle, a pan of garlic bread to the right. 

Against Bucky’s will, his traitorous stomach rumbles loudly. Steve shoots him a smirk, and Bucky scowls as fiercely as he can manage—although that expression promptly melts into a sappy smile the second Sarah glances his way. Dammit. 

“Have a seat,” Steve says—needlessly, as he’s already pulled a chair out for Bucky and Bucky isn’t an idiot who doesn’t know what chairs are for—so Bucky does, folding his hands carefully in his lap as Steve seats Sarah and himself. 

Sarah is in a regular sized chair, but she’s sitting on an enormous book (dictionary, Bucky thinks) in order to reach her plate. It’s adorable enough to make Bucky’s teeth hurt. 

“Alright,” Steve says to himself, serving up a plate of pasta for Sarah and then abandoning the spoon back in the bowl. Shrugging, Bucky helps himself. He supposes that a man who cooks too much pasta like a dumbass won’t mind a bit of presumptuousness on the part of his reclusive and scary-looking neighbor. 

Steve cuts Sarah’s spaghetti up into tiny, tiny pieces, using the side of a fork and humming to himself as he does it. That’s adorable, too. _ Dammit. _

Watching them, Bucky takes a bite, and quite a few seconds pass before he can concentrate enough to realize that what he is eating is _ not good. _ The pasta is mushy, overcooked; the sauce is definitely store bought, which, alright, nothing wrong with that, but christ, Rogers, buy the _ good kind _; it’s cold in some places and hot in others and, what the fuck, it just came out of the oven, didn’t it?

He swallows his bite, and then takes a sip out of the plastic cup of water sitting by his plate. Then he takes another bite. Another. Because his Ma didn’t raise him to be an asshole, and also he’s starving. 

But he realizes one thing:

  1. ONE THING: Steve Rogers absolutely cannot cook

It’s an oddly satisfying thing to realize, even if Bucky has to suffer through the consequences of it. It makes Steve seem slightly more human, slightly less like a solid gold, flawless sex god of a baby daddy. Bucky smirks. 

“So um,” says Steve, once he’s gotten Sarah started on her spaghetti and has served himself, and Bucky looks up at him with what he hopes is a very carefully neutral expression. He worked quite hard to cultivate that expression. It does not match what he is feeling on the inside in any way. “What do you do, Bucky?”

Ah, The Question. The one Bucky has been dreading, and has avoided answering by not talking to anyone since he got home from the hospital. He spears a piece of lettuce on his fork perhaps a bit too roughly, and the sound the metal makes across the ceramic plate grates through his ears like a scream, makes him jump slightly in his seat. He can feel that he’s holding onto the utensil way, way, way too tightly; he can’t make himself let go.

“I.” He stops. He stares down at his plate. He clenches his jaw. “I don’t. I’m.” Helpless, he lifts his metal arm as a sort of explanation, unable to look anywhere but straight down. “Used to be in the army,” he finishes in a half-grunted whisper, words barely audible. His metal fingers clench tightly into a fist, and he feels the gears buried deep in his false bicep whir faintly, feels something shift in an inhuman way. He hides the appendage in his lap. 

There is a thick, heavy silence. Even Sarah is quiet, obviously picking up on the abrupt shift of mood in the room, and Bucky hates it. Hates that he made it that way, hates that he is like this, hates himself— 

“Oh,” Steve says. His voice is quiet, or maybe it just sounds that way under the rush of blood in Bucky’s ears, and seems very far away. Bucky is more embarrassed than he can remember being, Bucky is—Bucky is _ ashamed. _“I didn’t know.”

Steve is gorgeous, and kind, and a loving dad, and his daughter is adorable and funny and smart, and Bucky has no business being in their apartment—Bucky, whose last real job was shooting people; Bucky, who doesn’t leave his house unless he’s forced to; Bucky, has a clunky arm that could break somebody’s bones if he squeezed too hard; Bucky, who has failed, in every meaning of the word.

“Daddy,” says Sarah, saving Bucky from having to answer, and god, he could hug her right now. He can feel himself shrinking into his seat, can feel his spine curling and his shoulders slumping and his neck tensing, can feel the headache building behind his eyelids with a steady, pulsing boom, and he just wants to hide. “I have to go potty.”

Steve says something in return, but the roaring in Bucky’s ears has officially deafened him. He scoots his chair back on the linoleum with a grating sound and stands, stumbling a little and catching himself on the tabletop. 

“Bucky?”

“I gotta—sorry, I’m sorry, I have to go,” Bucky says, words stumbling and tripping and tangling with each other as he backs away from the table and the two seated at it. Steve is half-risen from his chair; he looks like he wants to go after Bucky, but he looks unsure, too, and that is what Bucky is counting on. Sarah just looks confused. 

“Bucky,” Steve repeats, voice steady, voice grounding, but Bucky can’t—he can’t— 

He leaves Steve’s apartment in a rush. It takes him seven tries to get his own front door unlocked. 

***

Bucky’s never done anything but kill. He’s a dead shot, and now he’s nothing without a rifle in his hands. 

Waste of space, really. Shame. 

***

Bucky goes a whole week without seeing Steve or Sarah. 

He manages this by avoiding his hallway by whatever means possible (including once, quite memorably, panicking when he heard Steve’s warm voice outside his door before an Arm Appointment and climbing down three stories by fire escape) and absolutely refusing to sit outside in his chair for a solid seven mornings. 

By the end of it, he thinks he’s going to go insane. 

He feels stir-crazy, cooped up even though he never goes anywhere anyway, penned in by his own embarrassment. He can’t believe what he did: freaked out in front of the hottest single dad in the universe and his adorable kid, lost his mind over a simple, normal fucking question. It’s one of those things that Bucky has no point of reference to figure out how to deal with, it’s just another facet of Bucky’s life that he didn’t expect, never planned for, never prepared for. There is no book that tells you how to overcome the crippling shame of Everything Ever just so you can run into your neighbors in the hallway without wanting to sink through the floor. There is no instruction manual for existence. 

If there were, Bucky would own twelve.

It’s on the seventh evening of this that the second knock on Bucky’s door that isn’t a delivery person comes. 

He opens the door, because it’s obvious that he’s in here: he’s watching _ The Bachelorette _and making loud, obscene comments about anything and everything to nobody except himself, so there’s no way anybody passing by wouldn’t have heard his raised voice. He opens the door out of a skewed sense of obligation, but that doesn’t mean he has to be happy about it. 

Bucky affixes a scowl very firmly in place. So firm, in fact, that Steve pales a little bit when met with the expression head on. 

“Hi, Bucky,” says Steve.

“Aaah,” says Bucky with mild distress, and tries to shut the door in his face.

Steve wedges his foot neatly into the remaining crack of space before Bucky can get the door completely closed, shoving a shoulder and a quarter of his enormous, stupid face in there just for good measure. Annoyed, Bucky ups the wattage of his glower and hopes that his unbrushed hair and three-day build-up of stubble make him look unpleasant enough that Steve will just leave. 

“Would you be interested in babysitting Sarah for a couple of hours tomorrow?” Steve asks in a conversational tone, just exactly as if he’s not being crushed to death in Bucky’s doorway. The sliver of Steve’s face that Bucky can see is actually _ smiling _, a pleasant, genial, pretty expression that is heart stoppingly charming. “I’d pay you, of course.”

Bucky blinks at him. Caught off guard, his grip on the door loosens, and Steve manages to shove himself the rest of the way inside before Bucky can react. He leans his broad back up against the door after it falls shut, blocking the knob and effectively keeping Bucky from shoving him back out again—and does it all with a highly unjustifiable expression of pride. 

Steve Rogers, Bucky is realizing, is a beautiful little _ shit. _

“Huh,” says Bucky flatly, not even bothering to add enough inflection for the word to become a proper question for Steve to answer. He pulls the sleeves of his too-big NASA hoodie (a present from Becca, because she is the only person on this earth that knows of his latent title as a space nerd, and likes to exploit him whenever she possibly can) down over his hands, and tucks his chin further into the bunched up hood. Steve, with all of his sunshine personality and America’s golden boy good looks, makes Bucky want to either hide somewhere cold and shadowy or hang all over him, and obviously only one of those options can ever happen. 

“I hate to ask you,” Steve continues as if Bucky hadn’t spoken—well, technically he’d grunted, so, ok, fine. “And I wouldn’t, but I’ve seen the way you and Sarah get along, and I think you’d be lying if you said you didn’t want to hang out with her a bit more.” He smiles winningly, brushing his bangs back from his eyes when they fall down a bit. He needs a haircut thinks Bucky—Bucky, who is a man with hair brushing the bottom of his jaw, and is also the world’s most incurable hypocrite. “It’s just, Sarah’s daycare had its last day before the summer starts on Friday, and I haven’t been able to secure a babysitter for tomorrow yet.”

Bucky thinks:_ you must have procrastinated, then. _

Bucky thinks: _ and you’re asking me? Me, the man who had a mental breakdown in your kitchen while I ate your shitty pasta? _

Bucky thinks: _ I really, really want to do this. Maybe. _

Bucky thinks: …

Bucky says: “Ok.”

It’s like when Bucky told Steve he would come over for dinner: Steve’s whole demeanor simply lights up, and his smile and his body and his _ him _ are almost too bright for Bucky to look directly at. Steve bobs his head and straightens away from the door.

“Ok?” he confirms, sounding entirely too happy. “Oh god thank you so much, Bucky, you have no idea how helpful this is,” Steve says on a sigh, shoulders slumping a bit in relief as he takes yet another step closer to Bucky. He claps Bucky on the (flesh) shoulder, and somehow, Bucky doesn’t flinch. In fact, Steve’s palm is warm; some of that heat bleeds through the thick fabric of Bucky’s hoodie. It’s… not unpleasant. “You’re a lifesaver.

Bucky thinks: _ irony. _

***

In the morning, Steve’s household is absolute chaos. 

Bucky knocks on the door and waits a full thirty seconds before he’s let in; when he is, it is by a sleep-mussed and half-dressed Steve, pajama pants still on under a light blue button down, his hair in disarray. 

“Good morning,” he says, even though there are those shadows back under his eyes, and a slight pull of tension across his brow that sets Bucky’s nerves on edge. Steve steps back to allow Bucky through the door and Bucky opens his mouth to return the sentiment when a small cannon ball crashes into his legs.

“WOOF WOOF WOOF,” says Sarah loudly, pulling back from where she has collapsed against Bucky’s hip to brandish Lucky at both of the adults watching her in varying levels of amusement. 

Bucky directs his greeting towards her instead, taking one of Lucky’s stuffed paws in hand and shaking it delicately. “Good morning, Sarah and Lucky,” he says, smiling at her grin. “Woof.”

“Do you talk like a doggy?” Sarah asks him curiously, her blue eyes wide beneath lashes almost the same length and color as her father’s. Her hair is in disarray too, Bucky sees: wild and uncombed as of yet, tumultuous curls that brush against her cheeks and forehead. 

“I do my best,” Bucky answers. 

Sarah considers this for a second, stepping away and holding Lucky close as she stares up at Bucky. She seems to come to a favorable conclusion; she smiles and grabs Steve’s hand, pulling on it until his attention switches from Bucky to her. 

“Bucky can talk to Lucky, too,” Sarah says in an excited whisper. 

Steve smiles like he’s legitimately pleased, and this close, Bucky’s gaze gets caught on the tiny web of smile lines that extend outward from the corners of Steve’s eyes. It’s easy to forget how tired he looks, when he makes an expression like that. 

“Bucky’s pretty great, isn’t he,” says Steve, and Bucky misses the next few seconds of conversation as those words blare on an echo through his head. 

_ Bucky’s pretty great, isn’t he. _

Bucky sits with Sarah on the couch while Steve finishes getting ready for work, reading her the actual words of the book she’d been attempting the night he came over for dinner. It’s fucking _ early _; the words swim a bit before his sleep-crusted eyes, and more than once a sentence falls off into a yawn as he makes his way through the pages, but either Sarah doesn’t notice, or she just doesn’t mind. Bucky curls into the corner of the fluffy couch, and Sarah leans against him, her head resting at the bottom of Bucky’s ribcage. 

Steve comes rushing out of the bathroom at a quarter to eight, stopping by the kitchen to rummage around for a protein bar and calling instructions to Bucky over his shoulder as he does so. 

“She’s already eaten,” Steve says, and Sarah makes a small, dissatisfied noise in the back of her throat at the interruption, which Bucky echoes. “So you don’t have to worry about breakfast. The fridge is stocked for lunch and snacks and stuff though. Um, I’ve got her pediatricians number pinned up, and Natasha and Sam’s—my friends—in case you can’t reach me, and, um…”

“I need yours, or I definitely won’t be reaching you,” Bucky says, shifting a little so he can draw his cell out of the back pocket of his probably-too-tight jeans. 

“Oh right,” says Steve (dumbass). He comes around the edge of the couch, keys jingling in his hands as he shoves half a granola bar in his mouth. He looks up, holding a hand out for Bucky’s phone, and stops moving when he sees Bucky and Sarah curled together on the cushions like two interlocking parenthesis. His cheeks bloom pink. 

Huffing a sigh to cover the sudden awkwardness of the moment, Bucky unlocks his phone and glances at Steve with raised eyebrows, thumb hovering pointedly over the keypad. 

Steve shakes his head a little, as if clearing it, and coughs once. “Right. Ok.” He gives his number, insists on double and then triple checking it before Bucky’s glower becomes too moody to ignore, and then backs off with a little laugh. 

“I think that’s all you need,” Steve says at last. He smooths Sarah’s curls back from her face and then drops a kiss to her forehead, getting barely any response as her attention is solely fixated on her book. “Be good for Bucky, princess. I’ll be home tonight.”

Sarah reaches up and pats his cheek without disengaging her attention whatsoever, and Steve laughs again as he covers her small hand with his huge one, although Bucky can still see tension in the line of his shoulders, the cant of his neck. 

Bucky frowns, and pokes him in the ribs. “Hey,” he says, and Steve finally looks at him, and Bucky sees that his smile really isn’t happy at all. “Steve. If you don’t want to leave her with me that is totally understandable, because you don’t _ really _know me—”

“No, I. No.” Steve stops, draws back, sighs. For such a big man, Bucky thinks, he can get so small when he slumps. “I just hate leaving her for so many hours a week.”

And Bucky gets that. He does. He’s never had a kid and he probably never will, but it was bad enough after his Ma died and he had to leave his three little sisters at the after school program or with a neighbor while he went and worked down at the docks well into the evening—and even worse when he joined the army, even though they were all mostly grown. He was doing everything he could to keep the four of them alive, but he only saw them for about two hours a day. He missed them. He can’t imagine what it’s like when the person you’re missing is actually your own. 

“Yeah,” Bucky says, and wishes he were better at shit like this. Comforting. Even though he barely knows Steve, it’s obvious that this is a man who should never be unhappy, and it unsettles him, makes him ache a little. “She’ll miss you, but she’ll be so happy when you’re home. And until then, we’ll have fun, won’t we, Sarah?” he asks, nudging her until she looks up at both of them and smiles.

“Fun,” she repeats. “So much fun, daddy.”

Steve looks at her fondly. There’s a very tiny amount of that fondness still in his gaze when he turns to Bucky, and it makes his skin feel oddly hot. 

“Thanks, Buck,” Steve says. He glances with his watch, says “_ Shit, _” very emphatically, and is out the door in fifteen seconds. 

***

And they _ do _ have fun. Sarah is pretty calm for her age, is good at sitting still; she likes to draw, Bucky discovers—which is something she’s probably inherited from her dad if the few sketches hung on the walls labeled SGR, and Steve’s job at a graphic design company are anything to go off of—and he is more than content to sit there with her, to listen to the detailed explanations she gives for every image, to pose for a crayon portrait that comes out looking very unlike him. He folds it up and puts it in his pocket, anyway.

They draw, they finish her book and read a few more, they build quite an impressive fort out of couch cushions and Sarah’s bedspread in the living room—and after what is probably shamefully little coaxing on Sarah’s part, Bucky is convinced to let her take her nap in there. 

He pulls back the layer of blanket just over her head, making sure that he can see her from his vantage point on the couch. She waves at him. 

“Sleep, baby girl,” he laughs, and she squints her eyes shut with exaggeration. He watches her until finally her breath evens out, and her eyelashes fall gently against her cheeks. She is asleep. 

Bucky sort of wants to take a nap, too. He woke up much earlier than he’s been used to since being discharged, and he didn’t get his usual time to unwind on his fire escape this morning before he had to rush over here. He can feel his muscles unwinding, feel himself sinking into the billowy cushions; to combat that, he stands and stretches his arms over his head, and decides to tour the living room instead of pull the blanket he’s still working on out of his bag, because the gentle click of needles might put him to sleep. 

He hasn’t had much of a chance to study Steve and Sarah’s apartment the last time he’d been here. All that he had picked up on was a general feeling of lived-in messiness, surface areas lightly cluttered, too many things hung up on the walls and pinned to the bulletin board and magnetized to the refrigerator. All of that remains true now, he sees.

Usually, it would bother him. Usually, the sight of a room with too many placeless things in it makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, makes him itch for order deep in his bones. But, even though these rooms are cluttered, there’s a sort of… of deliberation about it. Like every misplaced item is, in fact, exactly where it’s supposed to be. Bucky thinks that he might be more unsettled if it _ wasn’t _messy. 

Stepping lightly so as not to wake Sarah, Bucky circles the edges of the living room with his hands in his pockets, letting his eyes skim over everything. 

  1. Stacks of books on the coffee table. Novels, sketch pads, picture books, etc. 
  2. A mismatched line of shoes by the front door, some tiny and brightly-colored, some big and worn out. 
  3. A thin layer of dust over the top of the television. 
  4. Pictures crowding the mantlepiece. It’s Sarah in most of them, Sarah at every stage in her life so far. Sarah smiling, Sarah gazing up at the camera with her deep, blue eyes. In one, Steve is holding her tightly in his arms, kissing her cheek and grinning as she beams at whoever is taking the picture, caught mid-giggle. In another, Sarah is just a baby, probably not even a few days old, and she’s cradled in the arms of a beautiful woman with dark eyes and hair and a red-painted smile. The woman’s skin is very pale. Sarah’s mother. Steve’s wife. 

Bucky sits down. 

***

Bucky gets a text from Steve at five-thirty-seven. It says: 

_ Hi! It’s Steve. Picking up dinner on the way home. You like Chinese? _

Bucky, in the process of scouring Steve’s disorganized cabinets for something he can feed Sarah and not feel guilty about it while Sarah dances by his knees, lets out a sigh of relief. 

_ yes. _

He shoots the answer back quickly, without stopping to consider the ramifications of what he’s just done. This means that Steve expects Bucky to stay and have dinner with them, and he’s sure they both remember how well that went last time. 

(Not very well).

_ Great :) _

“Ugh,” says Bucky out loud. He scowls and doesn’t answer, stuffing his phone back in his pocket as Sarah crashes into his hip during a particularly high-velocity twirl, and then laughs as he steadies her. “Your dad is bringing dinner,” he tells her. 

She looks up at him, still slumped against his lower half. Her cheek rests on his thigh, her small arms wind their way about his knees; she steps on his feet, and he doesn’t care. “Daddy’s bringing pizza?” she asks hopefully. 

“Chinese, is what he told me,” Bucky says with a little smile, curling his flesh palm around the back of her fragile skull and holding it gently. Her hair is like satin on his fingers, soft and light and smooth. “Just as good, isn’t it?”

She nods, but Bucky doesn’t think she’s listening to him anymore; she’s playing with the hem of his t-shirt, tugging at a loose thread and broadening the tiny hole that already exists there. Stupidly, because she looks fucking cute as hell, Bucky lets her. 

By the time Steve gets home, Bucky and Sarah are both drooping with tiredness. They sit at the kitchen table together—Sarah watching an episode of Paw Patrol on Bucky’s Netflix app and Bucky resting his forehead on his folded arms as he oversees her through one squinted eye—and look up when the front door swings open. 

“It’s me!” Steve calls from the living room. There’s the sound of crinkling plastic bags, and then Steve’s shoes hitting the wall with a dull thud as he kicks them off one by one. 

“Daddy!” Sarah squeals, abandoning the phone she’d been staring at so intently just seconds ago and running into the living room. Bucky sits up more slowly. His arm is aching right at the seam of scarred flesh between his shoulder and the top of his metal bicep, burning a little, like the fusion is fresh and new. It gets like that after a long day, sometimes; he thinks that, as many times as he lifted Sarah up today, it’s a wonder it doesn’t hurt _ more. _

Steve enters the kitchen, Sarah in one arm, a few plastic bags in the other. He smiles when he meets Bucky’s eyes—a slightly smaller thing than Bucky is used to seeing from him, just half of his mouth. He looks tired. 

“Hey,” Bucky says, standing and shoving both hands in his pockets. He rocks forward on the balls of his feet, prepared to circle past Steve and out of the apartment so he and Steve don’t have to go through the awkward dance of polite departure. 

“Hey, Buck,” Steve says happily. And—and that’s the second time he’s used that nickname, the second time the odd familiarity of it has rattled Bucky. “How was Her Highness today?”

“Perfect,” says Bucky, and means it. He knows he’s smiling as he says it, as the memories of the day filter quickly through the back of his mind, he knows that he probably looks entirely too fond, but the fact of the matter remains that he truly enjoyed himself today. It has been a long time since he’s enjoyed being around another person. “We had fun.”

“Oh, yeah?” Steve says, kissing Sarah’s temple as she turns her head on Steve’s shoulder to look at Bucky. “I knew you would.”

“Daddy,” Sarah says, sitting up in Steve’s arms suddenly and patting his cheek to get his attention. She leaves her palm on his jaw as he looks at her, eyebrows raised comically high, and Bucky should really be leaving by now, but. But he just can’t make himself move out of this warm, golden circle of happiness Steve and Sarah exude. He finds himself basking in it like an self-indulgent cat, soaking up rays that aren’t meant for him with a greedy fervor. This was precisely the reason he should have never talked to them again: he’ll get used to it, and then when it’s gone, he won’t know what to do. 

“Yes, Sarah?” Steve moves to sit her back in her chair—still stacked high with books—and smiles quietly at Bucky as he moves around him to place the bags of takeout on the table. His right arm brushes up against Bucky’s right arm, and it’s warm and startling. Bucky moves back. 

“Did you bring pizza?”

Steve laughs as he takes out white paper cartons, the name of a restaurant printed on the side in red script. “No, but I brought noodles.”

Sarah considers this, a slight crease between her eyebrows that reminds Bucky of Steve. “Ok,” she says finally.

“Ok,” Steve agrees amiably. He doesn’t look at Bucky when he says, “Could you grab three sets of silverware? Third drawer to the right of the sink.” 

Here are Bucky’s options: 

  1. Act like he doesn’t understand, grab the silverware, give it to Steve, say goodbye to Sarah, and be back in his own apartment to watch movies and eat ramen by himself until he falls asleep. 
  2. Grab the silverware, give it to Steve, sit in that chair across from Sarah and eat whatever smells so good in that carton that Steve’s opening right now, go home in half an hour pleasantly full of something that wasn’t reheated or poured out of a packet. 

He hesitates for a moment, long enough that Steve looks up at him slightly quizzically, before Bucky does as Steve had asked. 

“No, but I’ll grab two,” he says, fishing around in the drawer for a few forks. “I eat my noodles with chopsticks like a cultured person, thank you very much.”

When he turns around, Steve is grinning at him, a big, goofy, unbearably hot expression that makes Bucky’s stomach jump with something more than hunger. Bucky meets his eyes, but then looks away quickly, and sits. 

“I guess you’re just better with your hands than me,” Steve says absently. 

Bucky is very glad that he’s sitting down. He stares hard at Steve across the table, watching the way the paler man’s skin goes bright red as he keeps his gaze firmly trained on the egg rolls he’s putting on his plate, and gapes a little. Anybody else, and Bucky would think that he was being flirted with—poorly, not really subtly, but still, _ flirted with _ —but this is _ Steve. _Steve, Steve Rogers, Steve Probably Heterosexual Rogers, Bucky’s neighbor, the father of the kid Bucky just babysat, the guy Bucky had half a panic-attack in front of a little over a week ago. The hottest human on god’s green earth. The man whose wife is dead. 

Bucky reminds himself that they are not friends. 

Bucky clears his throat, and takes the plate of food that Steve passes him. Their fingers brush together a bit, and he tells himself firmly to _ get a fucking grip. _

“Like you would know,” Bucky says before he can really think about it, and smirks into his lo mein as Steve chokes on a laugh beside him. 

***

Sarah is nearly asleep in her empty plate when they finally finish dinner, her petal-thin eyelids struggling to stay open. Bucky feels almost unbearably soft looking at her; he wants to be able to smile as big as this feeling inside of him is, but then he’s afraid he’d bust. He smiles as she droops toward the tabletop; smiles a bit wider when Steve catches his eye, expression knowing. 

Fuck. Oh god, oh fuck. Bucky’s smile won’t go away. This means danger. 

“Better get you to bed,” Steve murmurs to her as he stands and lifts her like she weighs nothing. She curls into his chest, her thin arms and legs gripping him tightly, and Bucky is struck again by how tiny she is, by how fragile; she’s dwarfed by Steve in every way, looks terrifyingly breakable in his huge arms. But he holds her like she’s made of glass. He holds her like she’s the most precious thing he can conceive of. 

Bucky nearly groans out loud. Steve and Sarah Rogers are _ fucking him up. _

“If you wanna, um.” Steve stops and clears his throat softly, and his gaze darts in a flighty way around Bucky’s face. He never actually meets his eyes. “I’ve got the last season of _ The Great British Baking Show _ recorded if you wanna stick around ‘til after I put her to sleep. Just. You know. If you feel like it.”

Bucky glares at him. How dare he be this wonderful. “Charming cooking shows are one of my ultimate weaknesses,” he grumbles.

Steve’s eyes dance. “It is, of course, my goal to take you out,” he says.

Bucky thinks: _ Buddy, I would absolutely let you do that. _

He cleans up while Steve gives Sarah her bath and reads her a bedtime story, moving to the quiet background noise of their muffled voices. He closes cartons, washes their plates and forks, brushes the crumbs off of the table. The inside of Steve’s fridge is a disorganized mess so he straightens that out while he’s in there, moving things around so the drawers open and close easier, putting all of the takeout containers on one shelf, the vegetables on another. 

And then he is done. He tries not to let his brain run away from him; tries not to let it fill him up with questions like _ why _ and _ how _ and _ should I _? He knows the answers, anyway. It’s not like any of that is changing his mind. 

Bucky goes and sits on the couch in the living room, pulling his legs up under him and sinking back into the cushions a little, as he waits for Steve. The pictures on the mantelpiece stare down at him, and he shuts his eyes against them. 

“Ready?”

Bucky looks up. Steve is standing there, a beer in either hand, looking oddly hesitant to sit on his own piece of furniture. Bucky nods at him and pats the cushion to his right, hoping that he isn’t being too blatant in is open perusal of the man—Steve has changed into sweatpants and another of those stupid-tight shirts, and he looks soft and pretty and sexy standing above Bucky. Bucky doesn’t think he should be held accountable for his reaction to all of that. 

Bucky takes the bottle Steve offers him. “Sure am,” he says, ripping his gaze away as Steve sits a little bit closer to Bucky than he expected. Bucky’s brain fills briefly with white noise, and his vision does too, and so the next time he’s aware of his surroundings, the tv is on and the first episode of their show is queued up. 

“Thanks for watching Sarah today,” Steve says as the screen fills with idyllic pastoral images, then zooms in on the large white tent sitting in the middle of the field. He turns the volume up a bit and then sets the remote down on the coffee table, sighing loudly as he sinks backwards. “You have no idea how grateful I am.”

Bucky watches him out of the corner of his eye, focusing on the slight bump in the bridge of Steve’s nose, on the way the light from the lamp in the corner catches on his hair and turns it gold. He takes a drink. “Oh, I have some,” he says. 

Steve glances at him, lips tilted in a half-smirk, then back at the screen. His eyes are slightly unfocused, his breathing deep and even. Bucky wonders if he had a bad day, and then wonders if they have the sort of thing going on where he can ask. 

_ No, _ he tells himself firmly. They don’t have any sort of thing going on at all. 

“Yeah, I guess you probably do.” Steve shrugs, and then plays with the label on the side of his beer, distracted. “I gotta scramble sometimes to find people to watch her. ‘S just me and Sarah now, since Peggy died, and… yeah. My friends help out when they can, but they’ve all got lives of their own.”

It’s silent between them for a moment, nothing but cheerful commentary from the show neither of them are really paying attention to filling the room. Bucky watches Steve. 

“Anyway,” Steve says, and he seems to have realized what he’s said, because he’s blushing again. Jesus, the man turns pink at the smallest thing. “Sorry to bring the mood down like that,” he says, laughing in embarrassment and avoiding Bucky’s eyes. “I really didn’t ask you to stay so you could listen to me whine.”

“Your house, your topic of conversation, pal,” Bucky says magnanimously, but he nudges at Steve’s knee with his fingertips until Steve glances up and gives him a smile, so he feels like he’s sort of won. “And I’m glad to help out. Really, I am. Sarah’s great. Better than sitting alone in my apartment by a long shot,” he says, more honest than he’d meant to be. “You should be proud of her,” he adds, softer now. “You’re doing a great job.”

Steve looks desperately grateful for those words, and Bucky thinks, with a little pang, that he maybe doesn’t hear them that often. 

“Thanks, Buck,” Steve says. He smiles more with his eyes than with his mouth, tiny lines spreading outward, pupils large. “That means a lot.”

_ Shouldn’t, _ Bucky thinks, _ not coming from me. _But he’s a little pleased, all the same. 

They go back to watching the show, even though neither of them is quite giving it their full attention. Bucky is right: it’s charming. It’s also the sort of thing that he feels like he shouldn’t be having lecherous thoughts about his neighbor while viewing, so he tamps those down as best he can. 

Beside Bucky, Steve shifts a little closer. Bucky lets him. 

***

Steve shakes him awake gently, a warm palm to his shoulder, and Bucky comes up out of sleep with a lazy kind of reemergence that he can’t remember achieving since he was a kid. Everything is nice, and warm, and cozy for about two seconds and then— 

“You fell asleep, Bucky.”

_ Fuck _ oh god oh fuck oh no. 

Bucky sits up and scoots away from Steve so fast that his jeans make a little _ zip _ noise on the fabric of the sofa. The room is dim; nothing but the faint backlight of the TV illuminates them, the screen reading _ are you still watching? _hovering in Bucky’s periphery. Steve looks slightly wide eyed: the glow of the TV makes the shadows of his eyelashes on his cheeks ten times longer than usual, spidery, feathery things. 

“So did I,” Steve says, giving Bucky a small quirk of his lips. “Guess baking is soothing, right?” he laughs a bit awkwardly, but he doesn’t _ seem _ upset, and anyway now that Bucky looks closer, he can see the soft-edged quality of recent sleep over Steve. 

“Did I—” Bucky stops, and clears the rasp out of his throat as best he can. “Was I…” he points vaguely at Steve’s face, and then mimes sleeping, both hands tucked together beneath one cheek. “On you?”

“Think so,” Steve says, stretching his arms above his head and yawning a little. His goddamn painted on t-shirt stretches across his chest ridiculously; Bucky can see the outline of his pectorals through the thin grey fabric. That pisses him the fuck off. Fucking beautiful asshole. “Probably. I don’t care.”

Steve seems… supremely unconcerned. He even has the audacity to smile at Bucky, like it’s a regular occurrence for the one-time babysitter to fall asleep on him drinking beer and watching cooking shows while Steve’s kid sleeps in the next room over. Hell, maybe it is. 

Bucky doesn’t know what to say, or what to do, or how to feel, so Bucky leaves. Steve walks him to the door, movements a little slower than earlier, and rubs at his eyes with a small smile as Bucky turns to him in the hallway.

“Anytime you need someone to watch her,” Bucky says, and he means it. “Just let me know, Steve.”

Steve nods, and something about the look he’s giving Bucky makes Bucky’s heart speed up. 

“Thank you. I’ll let you know, Buck.”

***

The rest of the week rolls out like Bucky’s weeks usually do, nothing but his regularly scheduled events to keep him busy. He remembers Steve saying he had enough people lined up to take care of Sarah this week, and so he isn’t really anxious, doesn’t wonder why Steve doesn’t call him—he’s not necessary, after all. 

He only sees Steve and Sarah in the hallway once, on Saturday morning just as he’s getting back from Stark’s. They’re leaving as he’s coming, and he’s sore and tired and grumpy, but all three of them spare each other smiles, and Bucky falls into his nap feeling just a bit lighter than he might otherwise have. 

***

He gets the text on Sunday evening while he’s curled up outside in his lawn chair, the mostly-done blanket spilling in lacy folds down his lap, along his legs, and pooling at his feet. 

_ Hi Bucky! It’s Steve :) Just wondering if you’re still interested in watching Sarah for me at all this week? _

Bucky doesn’t bother answering. He folds up the blanket, needles nestled the center of the warm knit roll, and climbs back in through his window, then pads on bare feet over to Steve’s apartment. He knocks sharply with the knuckles of his flesh hand. 

The door opens almost immediately. It’s going on eight thirty, so Sarah is almost definitely asleep; as such, Bucky really doesn’t feel bad about his own intrusion. 

“Bucky!” Steve says, and he looks heavily tired, the circles beneath his eyes dark—yet still he spares Bucky a smile. Bucky wants to pat him on the cheek and tell him he’s doing well, but he resists that particular bit of dumbfuckery. “Did you get my text?”

“Anytime, Steve,” Bucky says. He crosses his arms over his chest, feeling the pull of his ancient blue t-shirt around both his flesh and metal arms. He furrows his brow at his neighbor. “That’s what I said, ain’t it?”

“Well, yeah—”

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees, speaking over him. “So you don’t have to text me and ask me shit like that, Stevie. I’ll watch her any day you need me to, you hear?”

Steve is staring at Bucky, staring and staring—but it isn’t a bad kind of staring, Bucky thinks. No, it isn’t a bad kind of staring at all: not if the way the corners of Steve’s lips are curling so sweetly is to be trusted. 

“Yeah, Buck,” Steve says, voice low. It promptly sends shivers all down Bucky’s spine, electricity coursing through him in a delicate little stream that culminates down in the curve of his pelvis. 

Feeling a bit flushed, Bucky takes a step back, not aware of how close he and Steve had been standing. He lets his arms fall to his sides, and then swings one back up to poke Steve playfully in the chest. 

“You text like a dork, by the way,” he says in a softer tone. 

Steve crosses his arms now, tipping his head to the side as he leans against his doorframe. His smile grows, and he casts his gaze down so that his eyelashes stand out against the dusky shade in his cheeks. “Is that right?” he murmurs. 

“Yeah.”

They are quiet. Bucky, disturbingly, doesn’t at all want to leave. 

“Well,” he says, slipping his hands into his jeans pockets and taking another step back. “Now that we’ve cleared that up.”

Steve’s laugh is such a nice sound. Such a terrifyingly nice sound. He looks up at Bucky, his eyes vibrantly blue. “Goodnight, Buck,” he says, words riding the tail end of that laugh. 

Bucky feels a bit like he’s swallowed the sun. Bursting, beaming from within him, a subtle heat that builds. 

“Night, Stevie.”


	2. Chapter 2

This is how Bucky Barnes’s weeks go now:

  * Sunday: free day
  * Monday: Sarah
  * Tuesday: Sarah, then one of the beautiful people he’s seen come around Steve’s apartment before (Sam and Natasha, he learns) watches her for the rest of the day because he’s beat after therapy, much as he hates it
  * Wednesday: Sarah
  * Thursday: Sarah, Sam/Natasha take over
  * Friday: Sarah
  * Saturday: arm

Steve is sprinkled liberally throughout this schedule. More often than not, Bucky ends up at least eating dinner with Steve—Sarah should have her dinner earlier, he finds, and so he cooks for her before Steve gets home and then either he and Steve eat the leftovers after she’s asleep or just order takeout—although he stays after a few more times, as well, just sitting on Steve’s couch and pretending to watch something while he sneaks glances at the man next to him through the corners of his eyes. 

He likes it. He does. It’s… he likes it so much. 

Too much, maybe. 

There’s a regularity to it that he appreciates. He craves order, he likes lists, he wants to know what’s going on and why—and this provides him with that. 

And spending time with Steve and Sarah… well. That’s not anything to complain about. 

***

“So I’ve got the ingredients for spaghetti, if you wanna hang around for dinner again tonight.”

Bucky glances up, a little surprised that Steve is still here. They don’t always say goodbye in the mornings—Steve, Bucky learns, is almost always running late, and so Bucky makes sure Steve knows he’s in his apartment and Sarah is with him so Steve can give Sarah a kiss and be out the door as soon as possible. He should have left (Bucky glances at the clock above the T.V.) ten minutes ago. 

But Steve is here, his hands in the pockets of his slacks, not quite meeting Bucky’s eyes as he shifts from foot to foot. He’s being cagey, Bucky thinks, narrowing his eyes as he watches Steve avoid his gaze. Cagey, and also Bucky really doesn’t want to have to eat his pasta again if he can help it.

“Sure,” Bucky says, running the brush once more through Sarah’s hair. He’s seated on the edge of her small bed, legs stretched out before him, and she’s sitting between his knees with her chin in her hands. She’s extraordinarily patient with this process; ever since she learned that Bucky could fix hair a million times better than Steve—thanks to years of little sisters in the past, and the fact that his own hair is long enough to wear up sometimes now—she loves for Bucky to do that in the morning when he first gets there. 

Bucky loves it too, if he’s being honest. He likes how happy it makes her. Plus, Stark is always going on about how he needs to practice fine motor skills with his souped up arm, and there is nothing finer than how gentle he has to be while braiding strands of her baby-fine locks. Killing two birds with one stone. Or something. 

Steve gives him a smile that looks oddly nervous. “Perfect,” he says, nodding. He takes his hands out of his pockets and then wipes them on the fabric stretched tight over his thighs, an anxious gesture. 

Maybe he knows how bad his cooking is, Bucky thinks, and he doesn’t know how to navigate asking Bucky to do it without sounding like an asshole.

Well, Bucky can help with that. 

“I’ll get it started before you get home, yeah?” he says, parting Sarah’s hair very carefully with both sets of fingers—flesh on one side, metal on the other. This is a process he has to focus on, and so he misses whatever expression Steve gives him. 

“I—I don’t want you to be too tired—”

“Steve.”

Bucky looks at Steve. He’s biting the corner of his bottom lip, teeth sinking shallowly into the pink skin, entirely too indecisive for this situation. Bucky rolls his eyes at him, and Steve laughs with a puff of air, and Bucky thinks that his own face is probably too fond. 

“Alright,” Steve says. “Ok, yeah. Thanks.”

“Daddy,” Sarah says from her position on the floor, running her fingers through the strands of carpet pile by her feet. “Go work. You’re late.”

“Yep,” Steve says, swooping down to kiss her very swiftly on the cheek, to tickle her stomach until she laughs—loud, bright, happy—and then straightening again, shooting Bucky another grateful glance. “I’m out.”

“See you later, Steve,” Bucky calls, and smiles to himself as he listens to Steve’s hurried footfalls towards the door. 

***

Here is a fact: Bucky Barnes is a really fucking good cook. 

His Ma taught him and all of his sisters when he was young, letting them sit in rickety wooden chairs around the table of whatever apartment they lived in at the time and watch her. Bucky remembers her hands the most; strong, veins and tendons standing out beneath her pale skin, shaping a bunch of miscellaneous ingredients into something delicious. He retained the most from those little lessons, because he always enjoyed it most—there’s something soothing about it. Something soothing about following down the list of steps, checking them off one by one until you’re left with a beautiful, consumable finished product. 

Spaghetti is far from involved to make, but Bucky enjoys it all the same. Sarah—having eaten about twenty minutes ago—plays at his feet as he works, running a toy car around and around the shaky towers of wooden blocks she’s built up on the linoleum. He can keep a convenient eye on her as he finishes up the meal; her quiet noises filter into his awareness as he hums gently under his breath.

He’s almost done by the time Steve walks in the door. He spares Steve a distracted smile (only halfway noticing the bottle of wine he places on the pre-set table) as Steve gathers Sarah up in his arms for an enthusiastic hug and kiss hello, but doesn’t halt in his methodical progress. 

“Say goodnight to Bucky,” Steve instructs Sarah after a few minutes of enthusiastic conversation between the two of them, and Bucky turns halfway to meet Steve, Sarah leaning slightly out of his grip to throw an arm Bucky’s neck and squeeze. His face ends up mashed against her neck, and he smiles, reaching up to pat her back in return. 

“Night, Bucky,” she says. 

“Nighty night,” Bucky answers, voice muffled. “Sleep tight, baby girl.” 

Steve and Sarah’s voices float out of the bathroom and into the kitchen as Bucky finishes up dinner and cleans up Sarah’s toys, accompanied by the sounds of splashing water. Every so often, one or both of them will laugh: Sarah’s is a light, airy noise, but Steve’s laughter is louder, is deeper, makes Bucky want to watch him smile. 

She falls asleep quickly that night, tired. Bucky had taken her to the park earlier in the day, and she’d tuckered herself out on the playground—so much so that she’d nearly fallen asleep riding on Bucky’s shoulders on the way home. Even so, her nap that afternoon had barely lasted fifteen minutes. 

“Out like a light,” Steve says as he wanders back into the kitchen. He smiles, soft and small, and framed as he is by the lamplight coming in from the living room, he’s beautiful enough to make Bucky’s breath catch in his chest. “She told me all about your adventure today.”

Bucky makes himself look away from Steve—makes himself focus on not shattering the dishes he’s bringing to the table with both hands. The ceramic clinks loudly against the metal one. 

“She wore herself out,” Bucky says, lining his and Steve’s silverware up so that they run perpendicular to their respective plates and then taking a seat. Steve sits across from him. “We went by the dog park, so.” He grins, remembering how excited she’d gotten every time a new dog would run by them. He wishes the apartment they all lived in was pet friendly. “That was. Thrilling.”

Steve laughs again. Hearing it this close, in such a small amount of space, is almost too much for Bucky. He feels like he just overdosed on sunshine. “I imagine so.”

“Shame this dump isn’t pet friendly,” Bucky says, voicing his thoughts out loud. He serves himself and Steve both generous portions of spaghetti, then tosses a couple pieces of garlic bread on both of their plates. Across from him, Steve concentrates on pouring the wine. Bucky knows fuck-all about alcohol, but it looks expensive. 

Steve’s blue eyes meet Bucky’s as he passes him his wine glass. “I know. We had a dog before I had to move back here for this job—a little chocolate lab. He was my wife, Peggy’s, dog, and he died a few months after she did.” Steve looks away from Bucky and down at his plate, but he doesn’t move to eat. “It just didn’t feel right, getting another pet so soon after she passed.”

Quickly, Bucky does his best to gauge if this is a topic that should be shut down immediately, or persued with caution and tact. The set of Steve’s shoulders looks uncomfortable, and the way he fidgets with the tablecloth seems almost… nervous? But he doesn’t seem devastated. Sad, of course, but not devastated. Maybe it would be ok to ask a few questions. 

“Did she… how long has Peggy been. Gone?”

Well, that certainly wasn’t smooth. But Steve meets his eyes again and he doesn’t look offended, so possibly that’s ok. 

“Almost three years,” Steve says softly. “She passed away a few days after Sarah was born.”

Bucky shifts in his chair, and the legs make an awful squeaking sound on the cold floor. This was a bad idea, he feels  _ bad _ inside, he shouldn’t have asked a question like that—he just didn’t really expect Steve to answer. 

People don’t tell Bucky Barnes things. 

Steve does. 

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says, feeling awkward and regretful and probably looking it, too. He grips his fork a little too tightly, so he sets it down. “I didn’t mean to pry,” he says, even though that’s pretty much exactly what he’d meant to do.

“No, it’s…” Steve’s gaze cuts to his, then away, then back again; the line of his mouth is somber, but there’s a softness to his eyes that makes him impossible to look away from. “It’s nice to be able to talk about it. People don’t like to bring it up, which, I mean, obviously I understand that, and I appreciated it at first. It’s just. Nice to be able to talk about it if I need to.”

Bucky doesn’t know what to say. His mind feels like an enormous swath of empty white space. He tries to give Steve the gentlest and most encouraging smile he can possibly manage. 

And—and it seems like it works. Steve appears to relax just a little bit, some of that awful seriousness melting away from his face. 

“We were highschool sweethearts,” he says, and god, of course they were. Steve, beautiful, golden boy, and Peggy, beautiful, crimson girl. Bucky can see it in his mind. Together forever. He wants to cry for Steve. “She’s the first person I ever loved.”

“She was beautiful,” Bucky says. His voice comes out soft, like a whisper, and he and Steve both lean a little over the table in order for his words to be heard. “I saw her picture on the mantle. She was lovely. Sarah looks a lot like her.”

Steve’s expression softens even further, losing the harshness of sorrowful corners, shaping back into the usual gentle curves that Bucky is used to Steve looking at him with. Steve looks at Bucky steadily. “She was,” he agrees. Voice low. Voice with a bit more air in it. “She would be so proud of Sarah, I know she would.” He laughs breathily, and if it’s more watery than usual, well, then, Bucky isn’t going to point that out. “And not because Sarah is gonna look just like her when she grows up.”

“Anybody would be,” Bucky says, and is surprised by the conviction in his tone. “Anybody would be proud to call Sarah their daughter.”

There is too much water in Steve’s gaze when he looks at Bucky this time, too much vulnerable sadness swimming in his sapphire eyes. Without thinking, Bucky leans across the table and covers Steve’s hand resting beside his plate with his own. 

Steve glances down. Bucky does too. 

It’s the metal one.

“Oh—” Bucky says, and tries to pull away, but before he can move back Steve flips Bucky’s palm and then winds his long fingers through Bucky’s metal ones. Bucky stares at his bent head, mouth gaping. 

“Sorry for getting dismal on you,” Steve says. He’s studying the sharp contrast of their hands against each other: bright silver metal on soft warm flesh, hands made to kill and hands made to hold. Bucky can’t decide if he’s grateful Stark made sure his metal arm has full sensation at all times, or intensely regretful. “Didn’t mean for that to be the turn tonight took.”

“Uh,” says Bucky, and then shakes his head to clear it, makes himself look away from the disturbing (alluring) picture of their fingers tangled together on Steve’s checkered tablecloth. “Steve. No, it’s ok. You need to be able to talk about it or you’ll go crazy. I don’t mind being the person you can do that with.”

Steve still won’t look at him, and Bucky wants, with the same single-minded determination that shot him up through the ranks as fast as it did in the army, to make Steve feel better. He would, he thinks, do just about anything to ensure it. 

“Hey,” he says, and squeezes Steve’s delicate (strong) hand so, so, so carefully within his own. “I made you talk about something you probably weren’t planning on bringing up tonight. It’s your turn to ask me an invasive question.” He takes half a second to steel himself, and then lifts their joined hands up off of the table a bit, making sure Steve finally looks him in the eye. Bucky keeps his expression steady, resolute. “Ask me about this.”

Steve’s gaze checks his for a second, searching. And then he nods. 

“Bucky,” he says, tone even, eyes clear. “What happened?”

***

Bucky tells him. The bomb, the men, the fucking Purple Heart. The hospital. The pain. 

He appreciates the steady way Steve looks at him while he does. He appreciates the fact that Steve doesn't ask questions, and doesn’t exaggerate his reactions, and doesn’t romanticize the event. He appreciates how Steve runs his thumb over Bucky’s metal knuckles when both of his hands start to shake, and watches him, and holds on. 

***

“You’re the only person I’ve ever told,” Bucky rasps when he’s done.

There is a very faint crease above Steve’s eyebrows. He tips his head gently, and arch of his neck is smooth. Bucky still can’t make himself let go of Steve’s hand. “Only?”

“Only one that wasn’t obligated to ask.”

It’s true. He’d told his sisters because it was their job to know, and his therapists for the same reason. He’d told Steve because they were exchanging precious information, and he knew Steve would treat this fact like it mattered. 

“Thank you,” Steve says finally, calm and strong and kind. Bucky looks at him—at the way he’s still holding Steve’s hand, at the curve of his golden lashes, at the soft, caring bow of his soft, pink mouth—and thinks:  _ oh no.  _

***

On Sunday, Bucky goes shopping, because he has to. 

It’s a bright, hot day; the sun bounces off of the pavement in standing waves, and soaks through Bucky’s long-sleeved shirt and jeans, and sticks the strands falling out of his bun to his temples and his neck with sweat. He slogs through the humid air on his way to the grocery store a block and a half away, shopping bag clutched in his metal hand. 

He keeps his eyes on his worn Chuck Taylor’s as he goes, resisting the eye contact of the people he’s passing. Bucky feels snappy today: one of the things he has to go shopping for is coffee, because he ran out of it yesterday morning, and therefore went without it completely today, so. Yes. His People Interaction levels are not High today. 

Let’s put it like this: it would not be a good day to frighten someone on the street because he’s glowering too hard. 

He supposes that he could have gone next door and asked Steve for a cup of coffee to tide him over while he went out today, but he hates to do that. He already uses a lot of Steve’s coffee and a lot of Steve’s food while he’s babysitting Sarah through the week, and he’s already so scared of somehow doing something that will make Steve not want him to come over anymore—better to play it safe. Better to suppress his caffeine addiction for a few hours than to risk anything like that happening.   


It would put him in an infinitely worse mood. 

The store is as busy as it always is, and Bucky’s skin prickles with apprehension as it always does when he enters this place, but it doesn’t truly bother him anymore. He’s come here often enough in the past few months that he’s nearly used to the loud, cramped business of this place, with its bright lights and its loud customers. Doesn’t mean he  _ likes _ it—just that he can handle it.

Because he’s good at shit like this now.

Grabbing a basket, Bucky hooks it over his metal arm and heads straight for the coffee aisle, slipping past people with a light step and single-minded intent. He darts in and grabs his favorite kind.

Bucky’s favorite coffees to buy from the grocery store a block and a half away from his apartment, ranked in order of most to least favorite: 

  1. Whatever’s on sale

The rest of the shopping goes quickly, because he’s just one guy and he lives off of things like frozen lasagna and ramen, and he’s heading for the counter soon, getting in line behind a tall guy and a little girl— 

Oh.

“Oh,” Bucky says out loud, looking up at the back of Steve’s fair head, standing just a few inches away from the two of them. 

Steve turns around first, expression polite but distantly confused, although he breaks into a smile when he catches sight of Bucky. Sarah follows, tucked behind Steve’s legs, but she reaches for Bucky’s hand when she sees that it’s him. 

Bucky shifts the basket quickly to his other arm and takes Sarah’s hand in his. He blinks at both of them, oddly disoriented. It feels so strange to see them outside of that little bubble they’ve created for themselves—the hallway, the Rogers’s apartment, sometimes the elevator. It feels like finding a new shirt that you didn’t buy in your own closet: lovely, but weird as fuck. 

It takes Bucky a second to realize that Steve’s been talking to him. “...wanna go to lunch with us after we’re done here?”

He must take too long to answer, because Steve’s bright smile fades a bit on the edges, grows fractionally less exuberant. “Unless you have plans,” Steve rushes to add, happy smile changing to a guilty one. “In which case, sorry to spring that on you like that, and just ignore everything I said.”

“No,” says Bucky immediately, instantly, Jesus he didn’t even  _ think _ , “I don’t have plans,” which is a lie, his plans had been to watch Project Runway and knit, although now that he says them to himself he sees that those plans are not super cool, “I’d love to grab lunch with you guys.”

Steve grins, shuffling backwards as the line moves closer to the register. 

His eyes are very, very blue. Stunningly blue. 

“Bucky,” Sarah says, her small voice dragging Bucky’s attention away from her dad’s lovely eyes and down to her own. “Your face is red.” 

Bucky, panicking, looks to Steve—and breaks into a grin as he watches an answering flush spread over  _ his _ cheeks, bright and deep and absolutely adorable. 

“So is his,” says Bucky, sliding his basket down to the crook of his elbow and pointing up at Steve, who is staring at Bucky with something like horror. Steve presses the back of his hand to one of his cheeks like a maiden from a romance novel, and Bucky laughs, loud and sudden, as his heart beats fast. 

***

Steve picks the place because Bucky has no knowledge of the cuisine surrounding his apartment because Bucky, as previously established, only eats frozen food and takeout. 

It’s cute; kinda hipstery, in a manageable, Steve Rogers way, with local art on the walls and vegan options of everything, but cheap enough that Bucky can afford buying something that isn’t embarrassingly small without wiping out his bank account. 

The waiter brings Sarah a booster seat, which she clearly enjoys immensely. 

“‘M a princess,” she tells them, smiling down in a satisfied manner from her perch. “This’s my throne.”

Steve catches Bucky’s eye across the table and they smile. “Ok, Princess Sarah,” says Steve agreeably, cutting up her food with a careful hand as Bucky watches them, breath a little short in his chest. “Whatever you say.”

They look so beautiful together. Steve, leaned over the table like that, movements so delicate for such a big man as he makes sure everything is perfect for her; Sarah, eyes big in her pale face, watching Steve with so much trust that it almost scares Bucky. Bucky has to close his eyes for a moment, has to put a bit of a buffer between him and the potency of this image. They love each other so much that Bucky, an outsider, can feel it battering his bruised edges. He doesn’t mind; he just sometimes needs a shield. 

“Can Bucky and I be princesses, too?” asks Steve, and Bucky opens his eyes in time to see Steve slide Sarah her plate before finally starting in on his own. He asks the question gravely, not a hint of amusement in his expression, and Bucky knows that whatever Sarah says will be what Steve takes as law. 

Sarah looks at Steve for a moment, and then at Bucky. Bucky smiles at her, feeling Steve’s gaze on the side of his face, wondering why it is so steady, wondering what that means. 

“I wanna be a princess,” says Bucky, giving her the same amount of attention that Steve had done, making sure she knows that both of them take this seriously. “I think your daddy and I would be very pretty ones.”

Sarah laughs at him, and Steve does too. Bucky smiles.

“Bucky would, at least,” Steve says, and Bucky snaps to face him so fast that his neck pops because  _ what.  _ “He already has pretty hair.”

Ok, yeah, what the fuck. What the hell. 

“I—I—” says Bucky like an idiot, staring at Steve who is soundly refusing to look at him. If Steve’s face was red earlier, it is crimson now; he’s flushed all the way back to his hairline, all the way down the length of his neck—but he’s smiling, pink mouth deliberately turned up, and Bucky is  _ losing his goddamn mind.  _

“Hm,” says Sarah. She’s looking at Bucky critically, so he gives her his attention, even though he wants to come around Steve’s side of the table and shake him and ask him what in the holy hell  _ that _ meant. “Ok. Yes. Princesses.”

“Why, thank you,” says Steve. His eyes flicker to Bucky’s on the path back down to his plate—flicker, but don’t hold. That gaze bounces away. Bucky’s pulse pounds in his wrists, in the base of his neck. 

“Thank you,” Bucky murmurs. His stomach swoops when he sees Steve smile down at the table. 

***

Ms. Potts smiles at him like usual after their next session, and it’s broader than usual, pushing past the edges of her usual polite tilt. 

“I’m glad to see you reaching out, Bucky,” she says as she walks him to the door, her words light enough that he doesn’t feel weighed down by the implications of them. 

When Bucky smiles at her, it’s real. “I’m not sure if I’m reaching out or being pulled,” he says, but it’s a joke, and he knows she can tell; she laughs lightly, something she almost never has occasion to do during their time together. He doesn’t laugh back, but when he goes home that day, for the first time in months he doesn’t feel exhausted to the bone. 

***

“Wanna stick around tonight?”

Bucky glances up from where he’s loading the dishwasher, taking in the picture Steve makes hovering over there at the edge of the kitchen. He has his big shoulders pulled in and up the way he always does when he’s trying not to impose, when he’s shy about whatever he’s talking about. The sight makes Bucky so alarmingly fond. 

“I know you’ve gotta go to Stark’s tomorrow morning,” says Steve when Bucky doesn’t answer—when Bucky just stands there staring at him like a fool—and Bucky didn’t know it was possible, but Steve’s shoulders have risen almost to his ears now, his arms crossed over his chest. “So if you’ll be too tired that’s totally fine, I totally get it, I just thought—”

“Steve,” Bucky says, rolling his eyes so that the blatant affection in his voice might not be so obvious. He loads the last plate and shuts the dishwasher, then comes over to where Steve’s still loitering awkwardly, stopping just shy of putting a hand on Steve’s arm. “Pal. Settle down.”

“Right,” says Steve, giving a distracted nod that Bucky doesn’t believe for one instant. His blue eyes are wide as he looks down at Bucky; his lips are a little chapped at the corners, like he bites at them too much. There’s something dazed around his pupils that Bucky either wants to laugh at or kiss away—and god, isn’t  _ that  _ a revelation to be having in the kitchen at seven-thirty pm. 

Sighing internally at the inevitability of all of these  _ feelings, _ Bucky gives into the urge to touch Steve, leaning forward a little and taking the thick band of Steve’s wrist in one hand. Steve’s lips part, automatic: Bucky looks away, face hot, and starts tugging him toward the living room. 

Steve goes where Bucky moves him with absolutely willingness, eyes fixed avidly on Bucky’s face the whole time. Bucky shoots him a few half-disguised glances as he nudges him down onto the couch and then slips in next to him and takes his hand away—not touching, not quite touching, but close enough that Bucky can feel the heat of him hovering that little distance away, close enough to drive him crazy—but he doesn’t say anything. 

Bucky fishes around for the remote (it’s between the cushions) and flicks the television on. 

“Got something in mind?” Bucky asks, finally turning to fully face Steve. 

Steve startles slightly, looking away fast, and then back up with hesitation. Clearly he just realized he’s been staring, and the dawning embarrassment on his face is adorable enough to make Bucky squirm. Bucky laughs at him before he can help it, and Steve goes the pink of fresh sunsets and, oh, oh god, he’s so… 

“Um,” says Steve. 

Bucky laughs again, although he makes sure to keep it quiet so he doesn’t wake Sarah in the other room. He hasn’t laughed this much in so long. “Sounds great,” says Bucky, and pokes Steve between the ribs, just to be annoying. 

Steve lets out a little, amused puff of air, his hand coming up to grab Bucky’s and then—and then Bucky’s palm is pressed flat against the broad curve of Steve’s rib cage, and Steve’s fingers are gentle where they settle over the tendons in the top of Bucky’s hand, and his skin is warm and smooth and dry, and, and, and— 

“You’re shirt is soft,” Bucky says, very quiet, his voice almost entirely air. 

Steve’s lips melt into a happy little grin, his eyebrows angling to a gentle slope above his nose. Right now, with his hair messy from where he’d changed clothes when he got home from work, with his eyes bright and his face still flushed, it’s taking a significant amount of self-control for Bucky not to slide his arms around Steve’s waist and bury his face in his chest and just be still. Quiet. Held. 

“I’m glad you approve,” Steve says quietly. His fingertips start to trace tiny circles over the top of Bucky’s hand, almost absentminded like he’s not aware he’s doing it, and Jesus fucking Christ, that feels so good. It feels so good to be touched by somebody like this. To be touched by  _ Steve _ like this. Bucky can feel himself going warm and tingly just from this little bit of skin-on-skin contact, and that’s sad and just indicative of how lonely he is, but right now, the only thing in his head is the fact that he never ever wants this to end. 

“‘M not picky,” Bucky mumbles. His breath goes short when Steve curls his fingers lightly around Bucky’s hand, pulling it away from Steve’s ribs so that he can hold Bucky’s hand in the narrow space between their thighs. They’ve never done this before. Held hands just for the sake of it. Bucky’s not sure that they should be, but he’s one hundred percent positive that he wants to be. He stares at the place where their fingers are tangled, slotted in so perfectly like they’re meant to be in that exact position, and he immediately and viciously cuts off all of those ridiculous, romantic thoughts leaping through his head. 

“Is that right,” says Steve, his thumb stroking the ridge of Bucky’s knuckles. He’s still smiling that little smile, fond and approaching tender on the edges, and that’s terrifying and exhilarating all at once. His voice has gone low with the effort to keep quiet, and the rumble of it shoots right through to Bucky’s stomach, making his next breath something a little closer to a gasp than he’s comfortable with. 

“Yeah,” Bucky mumbles, turning his face away from Steve and busying himself with finding something on TV to watch, even though that’s absolutely the very last thing on his mind right now. It’s just that. It’s just that he’s going to kiss Steve, if he spends any longer looking at that perfect smile. 

On reflex, Bucky’s hand tightens around Steve’s, and Steve goes still beside him. Bucky thinks he’s overstepped somehow, made a mistake, has completely misinterpreted this entire night— 

But then Steve says “Bucky,” quiet, and scoots over on the cushions until they’re pressed together from thigh to hip to shoulder. 

Bucky’s eyes flutter closed, TV forgotten. He feels Steve pluck the remote out of his hand and he lets his grip go slack, every bit of his concentration focused in on the places where they touch: warm, warm, warm. Distantly, in the back of his mind, he hears Steve settle on something that has a laugh track that’s loud enough for Steve to turn the volume mostly down, but he doesn’t open his eyes back up to see. 

***

The next Wednesday is not a good day. 

Bucky sleeps in too late, after a long night of bad dreams. He doesn’t have time to sit out on his fire escape, he doesn’t have time to read or knit or have a cup of coffee. He doesn’t have time for breakfast. He rushes next door to Sarah and Steve’s apartment, disgruntled and discombobulated and faintly on-edge, and when he lets himself in (Steve had a key made for him about three weeks into this arrangement), Sarah is crying faintly into Steve’s shoulder as Steve talks in a clipped voice into the phone.

Bucky goes to them immediately, not even stopping to think. They need help, and Bucky needs a hug, so he sits on the couch next to them and pulls Sarah into his arms.

She comes willingly, instantly burying her face in his chest, her tiny arms folded up tight in front of her. She grips Bucky’s shirt with both hands. Steve shoots him a grateful look, and Bucky doesn’t like the depth of the sleepless bruises beneath Steve’s eyes, doesn’t like the grim line of his mouth, doesn’t like any of it at all. 

“It’s ok, baby,” Bucky whispers into the top of Sarah’s head. Her hair’s a wreck, and looking at Steve, Bucky can see that his is the same. They’re both still in their pajamas. Bucky strokes a hand down Sarah’s back over and over again, rocking her in his arms, holding her close. 

“Sarah is doing perfectly well, Amanda,” Steve is saying, and there’s a layer of steel in his tone that Bucky has never heard from Steve before. His hand is gripping his phone like he’d love to crush it. “Thank you for your concern, but nothing you’re offering will be necessary. I’ll call you if that situation ever arises. Good day.”

He doesn’t wait for a response. As soon as he’s done speaking he ends the call, and then tosses the phone down on the couch as he flops backwards, hands going to his head. He closes his eyes tightly as a sigh stutters out of him. 

Sarah is quiet now, nothing but the occasional sniffle escaping her. But she doesn’t let go of Bucky, and Bucky doesn’t let go of her, and when Steve sits up and leans in close to press a kiss to the top of Sarah’s head, Bucky can almost physically feel how weary the two of them are. 

“Are you okay?” Bucky mumbles, leaning into Steve ever so slightly, until their shoulders are pressed together. 

Steve runs his fingers through Sarah’s hair, working out the worst of the tangles with his fingers. He doesn’t look at Bucky, but their faces are very close, and Bucky can see every bit of tension that still resides in Steve’s expression. 

“That was Sarah’s grandmother,” Steve says, voice tight. “Peggy’s mom. She hates me.”

“Steve—”

“No,” Steve says, cutting Bucky off. He’s breathing quicker now, and Bucky is afraid that something in him is going to break, and he needs to stop it. “She does. Always has, from the moment Peggy first introduced us. She never wanted Peggy to marry me, she never wanted us to have kids. She blames me for… she blames me, and she thinks I’m a terrible father and—”

“Steve,” Bucky says again, louder, and Steve’s increasingly panicked flow of words stops. He slumps backwards again, like a marionette whose strings have been cut, and covers his face with his huge palms. His shoulders curve inwards. “Steve, she’s awful, and you’re wrong. Peggy loved you, I’m sure she did, and I know that you weren’t anything but wonderful to her, and frankly, it’s a really shitty—it’s a really bad thing for anyone to imply that what happened to Peggy was in any way your fault. And if anyone thinks that you are anything but wonderful to this child, well, then they aren’t worth knowing.”

Steve doesn’t look at him. But he curls forward, curls into Bucky until his forehead is resting on Bucky’s shoulder, and Bucky can slip his free arm around him. 

And there Bucky is. Holding both of the Rogerses in his arms. 

“Thanks, Buck,” Steve whispers. 

“You’re fucking welcome,” Bucky says emphatically. And then, belatedly, “oops.”

“Bucky said a bad word,” Sarah says into his chest, and she laughs at him, and Bucky can feel Steve laughing, too. 

“Don’t say what I say,” Bucky tells her, taking over Steve’s job of stroking her hair back. “I’m a bad influence.”

Sarah pulls back so that she’s looking up at him, and her round blue eyes are solemn and just like Steve’s. “Daddy said you’re good,” she says, smiling at him. “And nice, and, and good.”

Draped against Bucky’s whole left side as he is, Bucky can feel Steve go still. He can’t help that quiet thrill that goes through him, mellow and warm and perfect and real. “Did he?” he asks softly, brushing back her bangs. 

She nods, and her smile grows. “I think Bucky is funny.”

“Yeah, funny- _ looking _ ,” Steve mutters with almost palpably desperate embarrassment, and Bucky flicks him in the shoulder, getting a huffy laugh and a tiny squirm. 

“I think Sarah and Steve are nice and good and funny, too,” Bucky says, and kisses Sarah on the forehead, grinning when she laughs. 

***

Steve leaves the apartment at least thirty minutes late, of course. By the time Bucky finally ushers him out the door with the threat of “Rogers you will  _ lose your job _ ,” Sarah has had two more meltdowns—the cause of which they failed both times to understand—and Steve has dropped his cup of coffee on the kitchen floor. 

Bucky sighs as the door slams closed behind Steve. He takes the subway to work every morning, Bucky knows, but it’s about a ten minute walk to the station, and it’s raining outside. There’s about a thirty percent chance that Steve will get to work on time and/or looking presentable. 

Making sure Sarah stays seated at the table with a coloring book and a can full of crayons, Bucky gets to work cleaning up the shattered remains of Steve’s coffee. The smell is intoxicating. He needs caffeine injected into his veins or he’s going to die. 

“How are you doing over there, Sarah?” Bucky asks as he helps himself to the rest of the pot Steve had brewed before he left. “Are you coloring something pretty?”

She doesn’t answer, so he glances over his shoulder—and blinks in surprise when he sees that she’s asleep, her head pillowed on her arms over the open coloring book. 

That was. Ridiculously fast. 

Abandoning his coffee, Bucky crosses to her, crouching down by her chair and curling an arm around her tiny body. This close, he can see that it’s a very light doze; her eyes are squinted, shut too tight to be restful, and she furrows her brow and works her jaw. She’s breathing just a bit too fast for his liking. 

Bucky presses the back of his flesh hand to her forehead, and then his lips like his Ma always used to do, searching for a heat that thankfully isn’t there. Sitting back on his heels, he tells himself to calm the fuck down. She doesn’t have a fever, and she doesn’t even seem ill, he’s just paranoid and worries too much. It’s fine. 

So he gathers her in his arms, lifts her up out of her chair, and makes his way to the living room. She wakes up at the movement. 

“Bucky,” she says, hand closed loosely around the collar of his shirt, and then falls silent. 

“You fell asleep coloring,” Bucky says, making his voice more cheerful than he actually feels. “Silly goose.”

“Sleepy goose,” Sarah says, laughing at her own joke, and Bucky can’t help but laugh with her. This kid. He loves her so fucking much. 

“You’re hilarious,” he says, sitting down with his back against the couch but keeping her in his arms. She doesn’t try to move away, and so he refuses to feel bad about it. Today, he decides, is going to be a snuggling day. “Wanna watch  _ Zootopia  _ or want me to fix your hair first _ ? _ ”

“ _ Zootopia! _ ” Sarah yells in excitement, loud in his ear. She scrambles to turn around in his arms, leaning back against his chest as he grins and grabs the remote off of the couch above him. 

They watch  _ Zootopia _ , which Bucky is not ashamed to admit he enjoys the fuck out of. She drifts in and out of sleep as they do, and as the movie wears on, she develops a little bit of a cough, but Bucky keeps checking for a fever and her skin never changes in temperature. It’s probably just allergies, Bucky decides. There must be something blooming in Brooklyn in the middle of June that’s setting her off. That makes sense. 

But he can’t deny the fact that she’s fussy and sleepy and clingy all day, and he can’t deny the fact that her cough gets worse, that her breathing seems just a bit labored. He thinks about calling Steve a million times, but he holds off; it’s really almost certainly probably nothing, and it’d be stupid to interrupt Steve for that, to make him leave work early on a day he already got there late. Bucky is famous for overreacting when people he loves are even slightly inconvenienced, and this is likely one of those times—so his thumb hovers over Steve’s name in his phone at least once an hour, but he never presses down. He never makes the call. 

When Sarah’s usual dinner time rolls around, she says she isn’t hungry. She whines when Bucky tries to get her to eat the macaroni he cooked for her, no matter how much he begs and pleads, and full-on cries—big, fat crocodile tears of frustration—by the end. 

“Ok,” Bucky says, letting her hug him, letting her press her wet cheeks into his chest. “Ok, baby girl, shhh. If you take four bites for me, you can be done. Does that sound good? Just four?”

“O-ok,” she stutters, pulling back. Her eyes are red-rimmed, are huge and blue and swimming in tears, and Bucky really would do anything in the world for her, except let her skip a meal because she needs to eat because she’s a growing child, he tells himself, he’s doing the  _ right thing.  _

“Ok,” he repeats, mustering up a smile even though the worry is growing, deep and real, in the pit of his stomach. He pulls the sleeves of his cardigan down over his hand, and wipes the tears away from her cheeks, and kisses the tip of her nose to make her smile. Then she eats four tiny, Sarah-sized bites.

“Good job,” he tells her, and lets her high five his metal hand. She loves his metal hand. She thinks it’s pretty. “Maybe you’ll want some more when daddy gets home?” he says, the end of the sentence sliding up into a hopeful question.

“Want daddy to be home  _ now, _ ” Sarah says, and dissolves into tears again. 

Thank god Steve is due back in fifteen minutes. 

She’s still weepy when Steve walks into the door, and Bucky is getting there himself. He hates seeing her cry; he hates even more not being able to do anything about it. She just clings to him, cough rattling around in her thin chest, and refuses to let go of any part of him, even holding onto his pant leg when he wraps up the remains of her dinner. 

Now, she’s in his arms while he stands in the living room, bouncing her a little bit like she’s still just a baby. He can’t get any words out of her, doesn’t know why she’s upset; he can feel wet, tight heat prickling at the backs of his eyelids, and in this moment, he is more helpless than he has been for the last year out of the army. 

“Steve,” he says when Steve meets his eyes across the room, tired and startled looking. Bucky’s voice sounds raw. “I don’t… She…”

Steve drops his keys and the shopping bags he’d been carrying and crosses to them, immediately taking Sarah into his hold. She lets out a wail, but she curves herself so tightly into Steve’s arms that it looks like she’s trying to burrow into him forever. 

“Shhh, oh, Sarah, it’s ok,” Steve murmurs, lips pressed to the crown of her head, voice muffled in still-unruly curls. He’s still looking at Bucky, a question in his glance. 

Bucky feels empty without someone to hold onto. Bereft. He shrugs, and notices that his hands are shaking again. His hands didn’t used to shake, not when he was in the army, and needed them to be steady enough for him to take the next shot. The killing shot. He doesn’t know—he doesn’t know— 

“I don’t know,” he says, and wants the ripped up edges of his tone to heal themselves, but he knows they won’t. “I don’t know, I—she’s been like this most of the day. She has a cough, too, but she doesn’t have a fever or I would’ve called you. I’m.” He takes a deep breath, and his chest stutters, and Steve steps closer to him but doesn’t touch. “I’m sorry, I tried…”

“Buck, it’s not your fault,” says Steve. Sarah is quieting down in his arms. Steve sounds like he means it. “She’s probably just coming down with a little cold. Or allergies.” Steve tries to smile at him, but all of the shadows in his face won’t let the gesture break through. “She just needs a good night’s rest. Thank you for dealing with this all day.”

Bucky nods, but he knows it’s jerky and unconvincing. He’s realizing that he needs to leave. Soon. Now. 

“It might take a little longer to get her to bed tonight, but if you want—”

“No, I um.” Bucky clears his throat, backing away fast. Steve is looking at him oddly. “I should get home. Long day.”

“Oh,” says Steve. For a second Bucky thinks he’s going to protest, but the expression clears, and instead Steve turns half towards Sarah’s bedroom, letting Bucky off the hook. “Yeah, no, I understand. Thanks again. See you tomorrow evening?”

“Yep,” Bucky says, and wants to say goodbye to Sarah, but doesn’t trust himself to cross the room again. 

***

Bucky can hear her crying from his bedroom. 

He lets himself into Steve’s apartment, with a call of “It’s me,” not surprised when he sees that Sarah’s bedroom light is on, spilling golden into the hallway. He peers around the edge of the doorframe, reluctant to just barge in—but what he sees erases all hesitancy from his actions. 

“She’s sick,” Steve says as soon as Bucky rushes into the little room, hands itching to help her, to do  _ something.  _ It’s an obvious statement, and at any other time Bucky might have given Steve hell for it; but he knows that this is no laughing matter. 

Steve’s voice is wrecked. He doesn’t look like he’s slept at all. 

Sarah looks worse. 

She’s pale, skin sallow; the rings around her eyes are deeply purple, and the sheen of sweat on her brow and along her top lip speaks of that fever that Bucky had been so fearing. Steve is sitting up on Sarah’s little bed, leaning back against the wall with her propped up against his chest, but even in that position that Bucky knows is meant to clear airways, her chest looks like it’s struggling too much to rise and fall. 

Bucky’s whole body goes cold. 

“Bucky,” Steve says, and his voice just breaks in the middle of the word. He is shaking very, very lightly, one hand hovering above Sarah’s fragile chest, one hand in hers. He seeks out Bucky’s gaze, holds it desperately. “Bucky she threw up, she has a fever, she—she’s having trouble breathing—”

And Bucky snaps into action. 

“How high is her fever?” he asks, crossing to the bed and bending to rest his flesh fingers on her forehead. She is way, way too hot, and she doesn’t react with anything more than a whimper that could be his name when he touches her. 

It takes Steve two tries to form the word. “102.”

Bucky’s heart jumps. He curls his hand around Steve’s shoulder.

“Stevie,” he says, soft, as calming as he can possibly be. “She’s going to be ok. But to make sure, do you think it would be good to take her to the hospital? Just to make sure.”

“I…” says Steve, and for a moment Bucky thinks he’s going to cry, and god, Bucky is scared—but then something of that steel creeps into Steve’s demeanor, and well, if that’s what it takes, then go for it, Bucky thinks. “Yes. Ok. Yes.”

They get her ready as quickly as possible, trying to speed through preparations but at the same time not wanting to scare Sarah any more than she already is. Bucky holds her close while Steve gets a bag ready (he has no idea what’s in it) and makes a few phone calls (he has no idea to whom). She is sleeping on Bucky, but god, barely, and she’s having so much trouble getting in the next breath, the next, the next, that Bucky thinks he is going to fall over from terror. 

He can’t let Steve see. That’s all he knows. He can’t let Steve see how dire Bucky thinks this is. 

“Uber should be here any minute,” Steve breathes as he comes over to Bucky, the bag over one shoulder. He stretches his arms out for his little girl, and Bucky transfers her carefully, carefully, carefully, trying his very best not to jostle her. 

Steve is still in his pajamas, bare ankles showing above his untied shoes. His hair is a wreck. He looks like he’s going to break in half. 

“Good,” says Bucky, so soothing—he didn’t know he could be this soothing. “Let’s go outside and wait, ok?”

Steve nods dumbly, and lets Bucky take the bag off of his shoulder. Bucky takes his elbow and leads him gently out of the apartment, into the elevator, down into the muggy street. 

He thinks of the last time they stood out here in the night together. So much has changed since then. 

The car is fast, and Bucky has never been more grateful. Steve is brittle beside Bucky, neither of them can even lean back fully in their seats, and the driver must sense that, because they get to the hospital in record time. When they get in, Bucky leads Steve up to the front desk with a hand at the small of his back, and Steve leans into him. 

They’re ushered back quickly—and somehow, that only deepens Bucky’s fear. If Sarah didn’t look on death’s door, they would have to wait hours like all of the other poor bastards in here, and they would know that it wasn’t serious, that she was going to be ok— 

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to wait out here.”

Bucky stops in his tracks, looks up. There is a woman in scrubs smiling kindly at him, and he hates her.

“What?” Steve asks, dumbly, pressing closer to Bucky. Bucky steps away.

“I’m not family,” he says gruffly, and gives Steve a very soft nudge towards the open door. “Can’t go back.”

“But—”

“No buts, Stevie,” Bucky says. He kisses Sarah’s scalding forehead, he kisses Steve’s cheek for good measure, he doesn’t stop to panic about it. That is the last thing on their minds right now. “Go on in. I’ll be right out here the whole time.”

The woman gives him another stupid smile and he doesn’t smile back, but he lets Steve hold his eyes until the door shuts behind them. 

And then he sits down, and then he waits.

***

Sam and Natasha show up at some point. They have coffee for Bucky, and a cinnamon roll, and he eats and drinks mechanically, not quite making eye contact. Sam and Natasha are nice to him, are good friends to Steve, he knows this; but he still isn’t good with new people, and the waiting room is fucking full of them, and his back is to a door which he hates, and his skin is crawling in terror. 

He lets Sam and Natasha talk to him in soft voices, and doesn’t mind when Sam gives him a hug before they leave. He promises to keep them updated. Natasha’s smile is sharp but kind, and it helps a little bit. 

He waits. 

He waits.

He waits.

Bucky doesn’t know how long it’s been because he is scared to find out, but there is morning light creeping in through the window at his back, and he has certainly been in this room the longest, out of everyone here. He’s tired, but he knows there’s no way in hell he could sleep; he wants to go home, and he wants to hunt through every room in this hospital until he finds Steve and Sarah, and he wants… 

“Buck.”

His head snaps up. Steve is standing in front of him, swaying a little bit, paler than Bucky has ever seen him. He looks terrible.

Bucky stands, takes Steve’s hand, leads him into the bathroom which is blessedly empty. He makes Steve sit on the countertop and then he stands between Steve’s spread legs, hands on Steve’s shoulders, faces close. 

Steve meets his eyes steadily. “Buck,” he says again. He pauses. 

He starts to cry.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Bucky says, and folds Steve in close to him. Steve’s big arms wind around Bucky’s waist; he tips forward until his forehead is nestled into that little dip between Bucky’s shoulder and his neck. His tears are hot on Bucky’s skin. “It’s ok, Stevie. It’s ok.”

“They want to keep her here,” Steve gasps, fingers digging hard into Bucky’s back. Bucky doesn’t flinch. “She has pneumonia, she’s so sick, Bucky, I’m so scared—”

Bucky’s heart pounds. Sarah is so tiny, so frail already. He can’t speak. 

All he can do is hold Steve, is let him cry, is rock him like he’d rocked Sarah all those hours ago. All he can do is hope. 

“It’s my fault,” Steve whispers finally, after the worst tremors have run through him. He won’t look at Bucky. “I was so frail and sick when I was a kid, I should have known to take better care of her. I should’ve let Peggy’s parents take her like they wanted, I should have done better—”

“Steve,” Bucky says. He clutches at him. “Steve. This is not your fault. I promise you, sweetheart, this is not your fault.”

He knows that Steve won’t believe him, because that is the kind of person Steve is—but that isn't going to keep him from insisting. From trying to make Steve understand. 

“You have done everything for her,” he whispers. “You didn’t cause this.”

Steve doesn’t answer him. He takes in a deep breath, and then shudder-sighs against Bucky’s neck. Slowly, he sits up.

Bucky keeps one arm around Steve’s waist, and lets his flesh hand drift up to cup Steve’s cheek. It’s lightly stubbled with hair so blond that Bucky can’t quite see it yet, and wet, and hot. 

“They want to keep her,” Steve says again, voice barely shaking. There are still tears running like rain out of his eyes, and Bucky wipes at them with the pad of his thumb the way he had done with Sarah. Steve looks like he’s about to simply crumple in on himself, just… break. Bucky tries to hold him together. “For at least another full day, maybe longer if she isn’t doing better by then.”

“That makes sense,” says Bucky, spreading his metal fingers in the middle of Steve’s back and pressing in. He hopes the steadiness of the gesture anchors Steve, helps him to understand that Bucky is here for him. “They’re gonna help her, Stevie.”

Steve nods, but his eyes have gone distant like he isn’t really listening, and his hands on either side of Bucky’s waist grip Bucky’s shirt so tightly that Bucky thinks it might tear. It’s ok. He’s gonna let Steve hold on as hard as he needs to. 

“I’m staying here,” Steve says, taking in another quiet, struggling breath. “In case she needs me.”

“Ok,” says Bucky, nodding slowly so Steve can tell he agrees. He thinks:  _ of fucking course,  _ but it’s fond. Sarah is Steve’s whole world; of course it’s going to be a nightmare to get Steve to take care of himself. “I think that’s a good idea. But do you think maybe you should come home for a little bit, just to take a shower and eat something?”

Steve is shaking his head before the sentence is even fully out of Bucky’s mouth, eyes wide and slightly wild, and so Bucky murmurs “Ok” again, and pulls him in for one last hug. 

“I’ll stay with you,” he says. It isn’t like that was really a very difficult decision to make: he’s been here all night, and he doesn’t plan on leaving. If Steve and Sarah are here, Bucky is here. It isn’t a reality he’s willing to examine too closely right now. 

“You don’t have to,” Steve says, and fuck, Bucky has never heard his voice so small. So scared. So sad. 

“I know I don’t, punk,” Bucky whispers back. “I want to.”

***

Steve goes back to sit with her, but he stops to get Bucky permission to come back, too, on the way. Bucky shoots Sam and Natasha a quick text on the walk: 

_ sarah has pneumonia. not sure how severe yet. has to stay for at least one more day. steves a wreck but im taking care of him. he wont go home and im not going to leave them. please bring:  _

_ -a set of clothes for steve _

_ -something for him to eat that isnt hospital food _

_ -sarahs stuffed dog (on her bed)  _

_ -steves sketchpad (on his bed)  _

_ thank you _

_ bucky  _

They each have a key to Steve’s apartment, and Bucky is confident that one or the other of them will do as he asks. He slides his phone into his sweatpants pocket and follows Steve to Sarah’s room. 

***

Here are three facts about Bucky Barnes: 

  1. He doesn’t like hospitals 
  2. Because he was in one for three months and it was nothing but agony, days upon days of agony, physically and mentally coming to terms with the fact that he was one arm down and always would be
  3. And the smell of antiseptic makes his lungs seize 

***

Here is one fact about Bucky Barnes:

  1. There is nothing and nobody that could keep him out of this hospital, right here, right now 

***

She’s so small. 

That’s the first thing that Bucky thinks when he sees her in that enormous bed. God, she’s so small. That’s the thought that gets lodged in his brain. 

The bedsheets swallow her up. She is pale and fragile and breakable and dwarfed by everything around her: by the sheets pooled at her waist, by the fluffy pillow she is propped up on, by the IV running on a long chord into the delicate purple veins of her hands. Her eyes are closed, and her lips are parted; she’s breathing. 

Steve, moving like he’s in a dream, drops into the chair pulled up next to her bed. Bucky sits on the floor next to him, and leans against his legs. They are quiet. 

***

Time passes. Steve’s hand flutters to rest at the crown of Bucky’s head. Bucky’s eyes drift closed.

***

Natasha pops her head into Sarah’s room just as Sarah is drifting fitfully back to sleep. Bucky—his palm firm and warm in the center of Steve’s back as he leans over the man leaning over his daughter—looks up and catches his eye. With a nod, she steps out into the hallway. 

“Be right back,” Bucky murmurs to Steve. He follows her. 

She leans against the sterile white wall with one hip, big tote bag in her right hand. She’s dressed elegantly in something black and vaguely threatening-looking; in Bucky’s sleep deprived state, he can’t remember what her job is, but he thinks it has something to do with bodyguards. Or the CIA. Something. 

She gives him that sharp look again, mouth perpendicular to the precise line of her red hair across her narrow shoulders. 

“You didn’t ask for anything of your own,” Natasha says, “but I grabbed whatever of Steve’s looked like it would fit you, and there’s enough sandwiches for both of you in there.”

“Oh,” says Bucky dully. He hadn’t really thought about himself. For some reason, this embarasses him. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” With her level and inscrutable gaze, Natasha watches him. She looks like she’s about to say something, but thinks better of it; instead she just pushes herself away from the wall and passes the bag to him. She makes sure that their hands don’t touch, and Bucky appreciates this more than he can put into words. He thinks that if he came into contact with anyone other than Steve or Sarah at this moment, he might scream. 

“She was awake for a bit, earlier,” Bucky says, offering up information because really, Natasha has known Sarah longer than he has, and she deserves to hear it. “It was just a few minutes, and she was scared and tired and weak, but still—but still. They keep telling us that she’s looking better and better. I don’t think they’ll keep her here for more than a couple of days, if that.”

Sarah hadn’t been as bad off as it had appeared in Steve’s apartment, thank god. They wanted to keep her to do a few breathing treatments, to get her antibiotics started, to monitor her throughout the day—but she isn’t in as bad a shape as Steve and Bucky had feared. 

She’s going to be ok. She’s going to be ok. 

Natasha looks honestly relieved to hear that, and the smile she gives Bucky this time is the most genuine expression he’s ever seen her wear. “I’m glad. Keep us updated, please, and tell Sarah and Steve that I love them.”

He nods. He’s tired, and he wants to sit down next to Steve’s warm bulk and make sure Sarah is ok. 

“I will.”

Natasha’s heels click loudly on the hallway floor as she leaves the hospital, and Bucky reenters Sarah’s room with their echo loud in his ears. 

***

Bucky wakes up with a crick in his neck. 

A few minutes into his visit, the staff had brought him his own chair, and apparently he’d fallen asleep in it. It’s hard and uncomfortable; that just goes to show how exhausted he is, he supposes. 

Bucky hasn’t opened his eyes yet, but he can hear Steve’s low voice murmuring softly, a string of words unidentifiable to his sleep-addled brain. He turns his head against the hard leather back of his chair, then finally looks across the room. 

Steve is curled as tiny as his enormous self will let him be, wrapped protectively around Sarah, who is sitting up against him. Her eyes are heavy and a little bit glassy, but Bucky thinks her color looks better than it did, and her breathing is significantly clearer. 

The relief that pulses through him is bright and hot and intense. He thinks he could cry. 

The book that Sarah loves, the doggy book, is held in one of Steve’s large hands, and he reads it to her in his gentle voice. He hadn’t had time to put his contacts in, so his reading glasses are perched on his nose, and he looks adorable, and Bucky wants to crawl over there with them. 

Sarah is holding her stuffed dog, Lucky, close to her chest. Her chin rests on the dog’s head. 

Bucky doesn’t immediately alert them to the fact that he’s awake. He just sits back in his hard-as-a-rock chair and observes, feeling himself slowly turn warm from his heart all the way out to the tips of his fingers as he does so. He loves them so much. He loves Sarah, with her funny low voice and her happy laugh, with her depthless curiosity and her boundless love for anyone and everyone. He loves Steve, with— 

Oh. 

Oh, fuck. 

Bucky stares as his brain finally makes a realization that his heart had been onto— _ god _ —weeks ago. He thinks that this should probably surprise him more than it does. He thinks that this should probably  _ scare _ him more than it does. 

But really, it’s. It’s sort of what he expected to happen, isn’t it. 

Flipping a page, Steve looks up and meets Bucky’s eyes, and he smiles, and, yeah, oh, Jesus, yeah, Bucky loves him so much. So much. So  _ fucking much.  _

“Bucky’s awake,” says Steve, still in that quiet tone of voice, and Sarah looks at him.

“Bucky!” she says. Her voice is hoarse and thin; Bucky feels that obnoxious pulse of tears behind his eyelids again and fights valiantly against it. 

Bucky stands on shaky legs, taking two steps and then kneeling by her bed because he’s scared his added weight will be too much for the frame, covering her tiny, tiny hand—mindful of the IV—with his, and resting his chin on the mattress. 

“Hey, baby girl,” he rasps, voice coming out like it’s been shredded with glass. He gets why Steve is curved around her like that; he understands the urge to protect her with his whole physical being. “Looks like Lucky came to visit,” he says, voice shaking a little bit, voice cracking a little bit. He wipes roughly at his eyes with the back of his hand and then pats Lucky on the top of the head, eliciting a weak smile out of Sarah. 

“Bucky came to visit, too,” Sarah says, and pulls her hand away from Bucky’s to pat him on the top of  _ his  _ head. 

Her hand barely weighs anything at all. 

“Of course I did,” Bucky whispers, and then he presses his head into the blankets by her hip, and can’t say anything at all. 

“Of course he did,” Steve murmurs. Bucky feels the warm trail of Steve’s fingers touching the back of his neck very lightly, and shivers at the sensation. He wonders if he should feel intrusive, like he’s doing something he shouldn’t be, like he’s somewhere he doesn’t belong; he wonders, but the feeling doesn’t come. Not with Steve and Sarah’s hands both on him, not with the memory of the way Steve had clung to him still fresh in his mind. “Bucky’s been here the whole time, making sure we were ok.”

Bucky lifts his head. He’s fully aware of how red his face is, how wet his eyes are—but he smiles through that and ignores it. He doesn’t have the energy to be embarrassed. He stretches his hand out and Sarah grips his fingers in her smaller ones, her skin cool and soft, her eyes already growing heavy and drowsy again.

He watches her sink back down into sleep, his chin resting on his folded metal arm. He doesn’t dare look away. He’s so happy she’s gonna be ok. He’s so. So. 

“Bucky,” says Steve. Bucky realizes that Steve’s pushing his fingers very gently through Bucky’s loose hair, scraping it back away from his forehead and his eyes in long, careful movements—has been for a good minute or so, if the subtle rush of golden tingles winding around Bucky’s bones mean anything. Bucky blinks up at him slowly, and he takes in a deep breath for the first time since they got here, and it catches sharply in his chest with a little sob. 

A frown of concern gathers between Steve’s eyebrows—and no, Bucky can’t have that, Steve shouldn’t be—Bucky pulls himself to his feet before Steve can open his mouth to speak, dislodging Steve’s careful hand with a little pang and resting one knee on the mattress (careful, so he doesn’t jostle Sarah) and leaning close, touching Steve’s shoulder lightly. 

“Are you ok?” Bucky asks. Steve keeps trying to say something, and he’s still frowning, although now there’s something even sadder about it, and Bucky can’t stop the burst of irrational fear that pulses through him. “Steve. What’s—”

“ _ Bucky _ ,” Steve says, and then he slides his palm up the side of Bucky’s neck until it rests against his cheek, and then he smiles. 

It’s a sad smile, still—or. Well. Bucky isn’t sure if  _ sad _ is really the word he should be using. Wistful, maybe, although that doesn’t really seem right, either. Whatever it is, it hits Bucky in his stomach, makes his breath soar like it’s dangling on the end of a string. Bucky can’t help but slump into Steve’s hand, his eyes drifting closed. He curls his fingers around Steve’s wrist, feels Steve’s steady pulse against his own skin, and he knows there’s something wrong, but god, he’s tired, and god, this feels good. 

“I’m ok,” Steve is saying, so soft. “You made sure of that, didn’t you?”

Bucky nods. He doesn’t open his eyes. He wants to sink into Steve’s voice and never come out again. 

Steve hums, and his thumb swipes broadly over Bucky’s eyelids, a touch so gentle that Bucky thinks maybe he imagined it. “Yeah. You took care of me and Sarah,” says Steve, still in that soothing tone. He’s quiet, quiet, quiet so Sarah won’t wake up, so that Bucky won’t feel like running. “And you did so well. You always have.”

Bucky tries to speak, he really does. But he can’t. His words are tied into a knot and tucked behind his voicebox, tucked behind the tears still hovering in his throat. He makes a noise, fingers tightening over Steve’s skin. 

“Thank you, Buck,” continues Steve. He’s so soft he’s nearly whispering, now. Just a few little pockets of breath in the air between them. “It’s my turn to take care of you, now.”

Bucky opens his eyes. 

Steve is—Steve is— 

“You don’t have to—” Bucky starts. 

Nobody has ever looked at Bucky the way Steve is looking at him right now. Like he’s wonderful. Like he’s precious, like he’s wanted. Like he’s… 

“I know I don’t, jerk,” Steve says, a tender twist in the corner of his mouth. He’s holding Sarah with one hand, Bucky with the other, bundling them both close, with care. “I want to.”

...like he’s loved. 

“Steve,” says Bucky, struck dumb with the force of all of this. He’s clutching at the fabric of Steve’s t-shirt, bunched up over his waist, but Steve doesn’t seem to mind. “Steve.”

Steve traces the curve of Bucky’s eyebrow with one long finger. “I’m so glad I met you,” he says. 

“I hate you so much,” Bucky says, voice thick, and he brings both hands up to hold Steve’s now, pulling it down into his lap, curling in so that his face is pressed into Steve’s shoulder a little above where Sarah is sleeping. 

“I know,” says Steve. He leans his chin against Bucky’s temple, and his voice is so terribly fond. “I know.”

***

Bucky slips off to the vending machines down the hall in search of something other than bad hospital cafeteria food for Steve and himself, because it’s been a while since Nat brought those sandwiches. He hits the buttons with fingers that feel clumsy with exhaustion. 

Steve is asleep, still looking too big and uncomfortable on the starched-white bed, his head at a crooked angle, his arms around Sarah. He’s gentle with her even in sleep; touch light, hand curled protectively over her chest. The lines of his face are haggard and worn, and his hair is a mess, and he looks older than Bucky has ever seen him look—but still, he’s beautiful. 

He must just be dozing, because his eyelids flutter open as Bucky comes near. He smiles, a slow-dawning thing. Bucky’s heart twists painfully. 

“Sit down, Buck,” he murmurs. Almost slurred with sleep, the edges all worn soft and gently frayed. God, Bucky wants to kiss him. 

Steve reaches for Bucky’s hand, and tugs him close once he gets it, and Bucky goes, of course he goes, his legs are shaky and his heart throbs a dull and sluggish beat, and his hands shake, shake, shake, but Bucky goes. 

“Why don’t you go home?” Steve says. He’s looking up with big eyes. Bucky sinks to the edge of the mattress, half so he can be closer, half because he’s not sure he can stand any longer. He hasn’t done anything but nap for almost forty-eight hours. “Go home and wait? I know you’re tired. I hate for you to…”

“I wouldn’t be able to sleep there, either,” Bucky admits lowly, because he knows Steve—he really thinks he does, now—and this honest truth will work better than flat-out refusal ever would. He shifts, and the bags of chips he’s holding crinkle too loud in his other hand. 

Steve doesn’t say anything. He lets Bucky sit against him, though, head tipped to shoulder, fingers twined. 

***

By the time they release her, Sarah is looking healthier than Steve and Bucky do at this point. 

Bucky holds her close while Steve signs paperwork or  _ whatever,  _ not really paying attention to anything but the feel of her little hands holding tight to his shoulder and the collar of his shirt, the way the breath doesn’t wheeze or rattle in her lungs anymore. She’s still weaker than she should be, still a little pale, and she’ll be on antibiotics for a while, but she really truly absolutely is going to be fine. 

Bucky hasn’t been so relieved in longer than he can even remember. 

“Are we going home?” Sarah asks him, prodding his cheek gently when his worn-down brain takes a second too long to compute her question. He smiles at her as brightly as he can manage, kissing her forehead—blessedly cool—before he answers. 

“Yeah, baby girl,” he says. He stands next to Steve at the front desk, their shoulders just a few inches away, and as if Steve can read Bucky’s mind, he leans a little until they’re pressed together from shoulder to hip. Steve’s warmth flows down into Bucky’s bones. “We’re going home.”

***

It’s all fine and dandy until the car drops them off in front of their apartment. 

Then Bucky’s asshole of a brain starts to panic. 

There are two options:

  1. Get out of the car and go upstairs and go to his own apartment and panic in privacy 
  2. Get out of the car and go upstairs and go to the Rogerses apartment where they maybe don’t even want him (???) and panic in front of them 

Bucky feels Steve’s eyes on the side of his face and he doesn’t know if he wants to shrink from it or turn and bury himself in Steve’s chest like Sarah is right now, and he dithers on the sidewalk, gaze pinned to the concrete beneath his shoes, immobile with indecision— 

“Hey, Buck,” Steve says, very soft, and touches the place where Bucky’s wrist is exposed beneath the fabric of his sleeve. Bucky can’t help but look up at him for that: it’s reflexive, because Steve and Sarah are what Bucky’s gaze always wants to come back to. “Help me get her settled?”

Bucky swallows, and the fear that had been making his chest hurt gets pushed down. Away. His head is spinning a little with tiredness, but Steve is drooping with it, and there’s no way Bucky would leave him alone when he’s like this if he didn’t want to be left alone. 

“Yeah,” says Bucky through a dry throat. They go upstairs. 

Sarah’s drifting off to sleep again halfway through her bath even though it’s not quite seven pm, tuckered out from the long process of checking out of the hospital and the car ride across the city. Bucky holds her, wrapped up in a fluffy white towel, while Steve picks her pajamas, and she rests her damp head on his shoulder, cheeks flushed from the warm water of her bath. Bucky sets a hand on the delicate column of her spine as he leans back against the doorway and watches Steve dig through her dresser, his own eyes threatening to fall closed. He’s drowsy with the warmth of her, the cherished weight of her, the soft muted sunset-light filtering in through her lacy curtains, the way Steve keeps flicking glances over at them, vivid and blue and protective… 

And she’s asleep by the time Steve has her dressed. Bucky kisses her forehead anyway, and Steve tucks Lucky down in the blankets by her cheek, and they turn off the lights and shut the door with a tiny click. 

It should be awkward: just the two of them in this hallway, alone together for the first time in hours and hours and hours. It isn’t. 

“I don’t want to go home,” Bucky says, his voice heavy as he aims his words down at the floor. He and Steve are touching, some part of them, and it’s like an anchor on Bucky’s limbs: one that pulls him in, in, in until he’s breathing in the scent at the crook of Steve’s neck and Steve’s arms are around his waist. 

“Don’t,” Steve says into Bucky’s hair. 

They move into the living room—their central location, their meeting point, their middle ground—and neither of them bother with the lights. They don’t bother with the pretense of the television, either: they just slide down onto the cushions, arms locked around waists, hands against hands, eyes closed tight, breath held close. 

“...should eat something,” Steve says after a few liquid moments, his words slow and without conviction as he speaks them into the soft place behind Bucky’s ear. Bucky, head tipped back against the couch, resting half-against Steve’s chest, just holds tighter to the arm slung like an iron ban over his stomach and hums his disagreement. 

Steve laughs against Bucky’s skin. The sound goes straight through Bucky, cleaner than any bullet, softer than any bomb. It’s just as devastating, but in a way that makes Bucky want to sing. “Should,” Steve says again, through a yawn. 

“Later,” says Bucky. He turns his head so his nose bumps the sharp angle of Steve’s jaw, hears the little wiggly breath Steve lets out, smiles. “Now, we just…”

Steve is quiet for such a long time that Bucky thinks he’s fallen asleep. He’s more than halfway there himself, floating in that twilight limbo between present and somewhere else, so he misses the kiss that lands on the top of his head. 

***

A few hours later, and Bucky blinks the blurriness out of his eyes as he slides into wakefulness. 

Steve is extracting himself from the tangle they’ve made of their limbs. He looks flustered and guilty, caught out with his face hovering just a little above Bucky’s, his legs off the couch but his arms still holding onto Bucky, his eyes wide. 

Bucky laughs. He’s still warm in all the places they were touching just a few seconds ago, and Steve is beautiful. 

“Sorry,” Steve says, whispering like he thinks Bucky’s still asleep. He still hasn’t completely stood, and so the angle he’s at is a little awkward: bent at the waist, a hand on the small of Bucky’s back and one on his shoulder. His hair hangs down in his eyes.  _ Idiot, _ thinks Bucky fondly. “I’m checking on Sarah. I was gonna grab you a blanket—”

“Oh!” says Bucky, sitting up fast—for a second his face is just an inch away from Steve’s and at any other moment the proximity probably would have a greater effect on him, but right now there are more pressing concerns—and slinging his legs over the side of the couch, forcing Steve back a few paces. “I almost forgot!”

“Huh?” Steve says, but Bucky’s out of the apartment and unlocking his own door before they can talk about it. 

Bucky’s own place seems hollow and gray in comparison to Steve and Sarah’s, but he ignores that for now in favor of grabbing the fully-finished blanket he’s been knitting. 

“For Sarah,” says Bucky as he comes back to Steve. Steve’s still standing where Bucky left him, his arms hanging at his sides, his eyes wide. Bucky holds the blanket out to him, draped over his arms so they can both admire every angle of the work. He knows there’s an eager smile on his own face, but for once he isn’t embarrassed by this. He’s. Proud. 

Steve, though, just looks stunned. And. Teary?

“You made this?” he asks, touching one lacy edge of the blanket like he’s afraid he’ll break it. His voice is disturbingly thick, and he isn’t looking up at Bucky. 

“For Sarah,” Bucky repeats. He steps closer, and Steve has no choice but to take the offered item, although he does it with slow and careful hands. Bucky clears his throat, shifting from foot to foot as he watches Steve stare. “I, uh. Knitting helps me. Calm down? And I thought she might like it.”

“Bucky,” says Steve, and oh god, he’s looking up now and Bucky was fucking right, his eyes  _ are _ wet, what the hell— 

“Sorry?” Bucky says, bewildered, even though he’s pretty sure Steve isn’t  _ sad,  _ he’s pretty sure he doesn’t need to be  _ apologizing,  _ “I can. Take it back? I guess—”

“Can I kiss you?”

If Bucky thought he was shocked by that request, it’s nothing compared to the look that crosses Steve’s face. His mouth drops open, his cheeks turn a brighter red than Bucky has ever seen them—and yet there’s determination on his face, too. Sheer, bullheaded determination, even under an embarrassment so acute that Bucky can feel it rolling off of Steve in waves. 

“God,” says Bucky, hoarse with… with all of these emotions, bubbling up and out of his chest, making him giddy. He laughs before he can help himself, and Steve starts to smile, a slow, pink-tinged crawl that Bucky wants to bite off of his face. “ _ Steve. _ ”

“So, yes?” Steve says, even though he’s setting the blanket down and then turning around, sliding his broad palms around either side of Bucky’s waist, pulling him in until Bucky has no choice but to grip his ridiculous shoulders. 

“ _ Yes, _ asshole,” Bucky breathes, and he’s smiling, smiling, smiling even as Steve’s lips brush his and he can’t smile anymore. 

***

Steve kisses like he does everything else. 

(Except cook).

Very, very well. 

***

So this is the epilogue of the story: 

Bucky Barnes lives in an apartment in Brooklyn. Bucky Barnes has a metal arm, and he uses it to water his growing collection of plants, to knit pretty things, to pet the dog they talked their landlord into allowing, to pick up the little girl he loves, to hold her father who loves  _ him _ . 

Bucky Barnes is fine. He really, really is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading, guys! Come find me on [Twitter<3](https://twitter.com/unicornpoe)


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